Dragon
by Catten90
Summary: Stephanie s childhood friend Kat returns to Trenton, what kind of trouble can the two of them find and will Kat find love with one of the merry men? There will be fighting, shooting, explosions and car chases, will there be time left for love? Ranger/Stephanie Lester/OC
1. Chapter 1 - Trenton

Disclaimer: I own nothing except for Kat and the storyline

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**DRAGON**

_Chapter One - Trenton_

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I yawned and rubbed my eyes tiredly, I was going on 32 hours with no sleep and knew that I really shouldn´t be driving anymore. But I had no choice… My apartment was gone and the life I had built for myself in the city of Los Angeles was gone with it. Everything I owned was loaded onto my big, black Ford F250 pickup truck and I was trying to reach Trenton, New Jersey, hoping that one of my oldest friends would be able to help me out.

A few hours later I finally pulled into the parking lot of my friends building, turning off the engine and looking up at the rows of windows. It was late, almost one am but the light was still on in what would be her apartment if I remembered her directions correctly. We hadn´t met in person for years but still stayed in contact by phone. I grabbed my backpack, locked the car and made my way inside her building, taking the stairs to the second floor. I took a deep breath and knocked on her door, hoping that she would recognize me.

I heard movements on the other side of the door and then it was flung open and a ball of energy with brunette hair by the name of Stephanie Plum was clinging to my weary frame.

"OMG! Kat! What are you doing here? Come on in, you look like you´re about to collapse." She said and pulled me inside her apartment before she locked the door again and reattached the security chain and pushed the dead bolt in place. She pushed me down to sit on the couch before she disappeared into the kitchen for a few minutes, returning with two cups, one filled with hot chocolate and the other filled with strong, steaming coffee.

She handed me the cup with coffee with a smile and said.

"You look like you need this. Now you know that I love you and that you are always welcome in my home but what brings you here now? In the middle of the night? I thought you lived in Los Angeles?" I sighed but knew that after all the trouble I was about to cause her, she deserved the truth.

"I have nowhere else to go Steph… My apartment was destroyed; everything I own is in my car down in your parking lot. I was hoping that you´d let me sleep on your couch until I can find an apartment…" I looked up at her and saw her blue eyes focused on me, a frown on her forehead telling me she was thinking hard on something. Suddenly she blinked, smiled at me and said.

"Of course you can stay with me Kat, but you should now that every now and then I attract a stalker or a psycho who breaks in and tries to kill me." I stared at her with an open mouth, realizing that she was completely serious. We talked on the phone at least once a month since we graduated from high school but apparently she didn´t tell me about everything. I decided to let it go for now and instead drained my coffee cup, telling Steph.

"I don´t know about you but I´m beat, I have driven from coast to coast and haven't slept for almost 43 hours. Let´s go to sleep and talk more in the morning." Steph only nodded and smiled. I used her bathroom, changing into my pajamas and brushing my teeth and when I exited she had left a pillow and a blanket on the couch for me. I smiled at her thoughtfulness and as soon as I lay down on the couch I was fast asleep.

The next morning came way too early but I simply sighed and got up anyway, I had a lot to do today and couldn´t afford to sleep for as long as I wanted. I was surprised to find Stephanie already awake and dressed for the day, sipping a cup of coffee in the kitchen when I entered. She had never been a morning person unlike me so I wondered what had made her change. I leaned against the counter next to her, sipping my own coffee and asked her.

"So what´s been going on in your life these last few years? I have a feeling that you might have not told me the truth since you lost your job at E.E. Martin." She blushed and looked away from me and I knew I had been spot on; I had always had a knack for knowing when people were telling the truth and when they were not.

"Yeah sorry about that… I couldn´t find a new job so I started to work for my cousin Vinnie as a bounty hunter. I guess with everyone telling me to quit it because it was no job for a woman I got hesitant to tell people what I do… I still work as a bounty hunter but not for my cousin, he sold his business to Rangeman a year or so back and I work for them, taking in skips, helping with new clients and distractions and whatever else I can help with. Lula are going after the low-level skips by herself now and Connie still does the bonding out and managed our paperwork, the office is on the second floor on Haywood now though… The owner of Rangeman, Ranger, was the one who taught me about bounty hunting and is one of my closest friends, as well as my very new boyfriend. And all the guys that work with him are just awesome; most of them are ex-military just like you." She told me and I smiled back at her. I had joined the military right after high school and only retired from the military a few months ago.

"That´s awesome Steph! I bet you´re a great bounty hunter." I told her truthfully, I knew she had great instincts that would help her a lot in her chosen profession.

"What about you Kat? What happened in LA to make you leave the city for good? I doubt it was just because of the apartment." I nodded and told her.

"You´re right, as usual. When I left the military I started working for a guy that had a small investigation firm, I started working as a P.I. and met a guy named Scott through work. He hired us to find out if his wife was cheating on him, she was so he divorced her and then after a few months we started dating. Everything was fine for another few months but then his ex-wife started harassing us. She blamed me for taking her husband away apparently and then I got a call from General Cooper and had to go away for two months on a special mission, I still do those every once in a while just so you know, and when I returned Scott was dead and I was accused of his murder. They soon realized that I was innocent though and threw the ex-wife in jail since she was the one who actually murdered him. But I couldn´t go back to work as a P.I. after that and when my apartment building burnt down I had enough. So I packed what little I had left and returned here in the hopes of getting my best friend from high school back and maybe get my life back together." Stephanie looked at me with shining eyes and said.

"Of course you have me! You can stay as long as you want Kat and I´ll help you with whatever you may need." She glanced at the clock and said.

"Actually, I have to be at Rangeman in like twenty minutes so if you want to meet Ranger and the guys you could come with me. I´m sure they´d love to share a few military stories with you and if you want to I´m sure you can find a sparring partner, unless I have rubbed off on you and you and you suddenly detest exercising?" She asked me with a smile and I only shook my head at her, smiled back and answered.

"I´m ex-military of course I enjoy exercise. I´ll come with you, might be interesting to see and meet the men that have gotten your respect and love." We quickly gathered our things and I changed into a pair of tan cargo pants and dark brown tank top, laced up my combat boots and tucked my tags inside my shirt before grabbing my backpack and meeting Stephanie at the door. I had my two CZ-75´s secured in thigh holsters, with my license to carry safely tucked away in a hidden compartment on the holster. I also wore two knives tucked into my boots, and a few other handy things hidden on my person. My black, short hair was in its usual messy style and my tanned skin and a little bit eyeliner made my dark blue eyes pop. I saw Steph eye my visible weapons a little hesitantly but she didn´t say anything about it so I didn´t explain it.

"Still not carrying a handbag?" She asked me instead, shaking of her unease and instead showed me that she was clearly amused as I shook my head no.

"Never, I don´t carry around more than what I can fit on my person." I told her and watched her reaction as we reached the parking lot. She searched the parking lot as if she had forgotten where she parked her car before realization dawned in her eyes and she started swearing like a drunken sailor.

"Something wrong?" I asked her calmly.

"Yeah I have no car; it blew up last night… I can´t believe that I actually forgot about it!" Her reaction was so funny that I couldn´t help myself, I burst out laughing and didn´t stop until my stomach hurt. Steph was glaring at me but I only unlocked my own car and told her.

"I´ll drive."

The short drive over to Haywood where I was told that Rangeman was located passed quickly and when Steph used her key fob to let me inside the underground parking garage I was amazed at the successful business this Ranger must be running for him to own a building like this. I turned off the engine, got out from the car and locked it before leaning calmly against the side of the car, waiting for the welcome committee I was sure was on its way by now.

"What are you waiting for Kat the elevator is right there?" Stephanie asked me and I only gave her a look before explaining.

"If these people are as good at what they do as you have told me they will be down here any second now. You might know that I am a friend but they only know that a foreign car just buzzed its way in and parked in their garage. They will be coming down to see who I am and if I am a danger."

Steph did her best fish on land imitation and I was trying my best not to laugh at her when the elevator opened and several large men built from only muscle and dressed in black exited and quickly approached us. They came to a stop a few feet away and one of them spoke to Steph.

"Babe, who´s this and what are she doing here?" Steph sent a small glare in his direction and I was surprised that she was so protective of me; surely she knew that I was more than capable of taking care of myself?

"Don´t be rude batman, this is Kat, one of my oldest and closest friends. Kat this is Ranger, the owner of Rangeman." Ranger was tall, muscular and had an air around him that demanded respect and attention. His skin was caramel, his hair a silky brown that was kept back in a low ponytail and his eyes a warm brown.

"Pleasure." I added in to be polite and then stayed quiet as Steph continued with explaining why I was here.

"And she´s here because I offered for her to come with me and meet you guys. She will be staying with me for a while so you will see each other anyway and I thought that the guys might enjoy her company, she´s ex-military too."

That caught the guys attention and I stood a little straighter, showing that I wasn´t intimidated by their appearances in the slightest. I knew that I could hold my own against them if I had to. Ranger looked over me again, assessing me with intelligent eyes and I allowed it without making a fuss, I knew he was just careful; you had to be in his line of work. We stood in silence as Ranger tried to come to a decision about me and after a few minutes Steph had enough and told him sharply.

"Oh come on Ranger! Would I have brought her here if I believed it would be a bad idea? She´s closer to me than my own sister and you won´t let her inside? If you´re going to be like that maybe we´ll leave again and I might not be inclined to come back in the near future." All the guys looked at Stephanie with shocked expressions and judging by Rangers shell-shocked look, she didn´t tell him off often.

But I noticed the tenseness in her body and understood that she really didn´t want to be separated from any of these guys for any amount of time. I shook my head slowly at the sacrifice she was willing to make for me but told her gently.

"There´s no need for you to stay away from them Steph, if they don´t want me here then I don´t have to be here. I know very well how difficult it is to trust strangers in our line of work and while you have known me since school, they have just met me and only know that I´m a friend of yours, an ex-military and armed." I smiled weakly at all the nameless guys that surrounded me, showing them that I was calm and would leave if they told me too before focusing back on Ranger.

He was still watching me with those dark eyes of his but I saw a gleam in them that made me feel like I had done something he approved of.

"If you agree to leave your weapons in the car until I´m sure I can trust you, you are welcome here." I nodded once to show him that I understood and would obey his rule and then he turned to Steph.

"We need to go Babe, got a lead on that skip of yours." And with that he walked over to a black cayenne without another word or look at us. Steph bit her lower lip and looked hesitantly at me before asking me.

"Will you be alright here on your own for a little while Kat?"

"Of course I will don´t worry about me. Go and catch your skip and I´ll see you later, wildcat." I smiled at the red that flushed her cheeks as I mentioned her high school nickname. She stuck her tongue out at me as she passed me in the car and I chuckled at her antics, watching the car until it was out of sight before turning my attention to the men that was still standing in a loose semi-circle around me.

"Care to tell me you names or am I going to have to guess?" I asked with a humorous smile and started dismantling my weapons for safekeeping in my car.

One of the tall, muscly men stepped forward and I took notice of his caramel skin, tall frame, impressive yet discrete muscles, unruly yet still sexy hair and amazingly green eyes before he spoke with a voice that was like liquid velvet.

"I´m Lester Santos, the big guy on my right is named Tank and the one on my left is Bobby Brown. The three of us along with Ranger make up the core team of Rangeman Trenton. The other guys here are named Cal, Ram, Binkie, Junior and Hal." He told me and pointed to every person as he told me their names.

Tank was appropriately named since he was huge and had bulging muscles that would have been very intimidating had I been a normal person. His skin was dark, like strong coffee, his head shaved bald and his eyes dark brown to match his skin tone. Bobby was both shorter and more lean than bulgy but he was still almost a head taller than me and much wider across the shoulders. His skin was the color of milk chocolate, his short hair a dark brown, almost black and his eyes the color of melted chocolate.

Cal was also tall, they all were and both his and all the others bodies were made out of pure muscle. He had lightly tanned skin, a shaved head and a flaming skull tattooed on his forehead, I wondered about the placement but knew I had to save those kinds of questions for later when we knew each other a little better. His eyes were a dark blue and watched me closely, but more curiously than hostile thankfully. Ram had lightly tanned skin, dark hair and grey eyes, Binkie dirty blonde hair and brown eyes, Junior had caramel skin, black hair and brown eyes and Hal had lightly tanned skin, blonde hair and green eyes.

I had finished dismantling my weapons and pulled the two knives from my boots, tossing them into the car as well before introducing myself to the guys.

"Name´s Kathleen Hawke but I prefer Kat. Do I need to lose more of my equipment or am I good to go now?" The last part was directed to the guy named Santos and he gave me a wink and a suggestive look before asking.

"That depends on what else you carry around on that gorgeous body of yours?"

"I have a length of wire, a set of lock picks, a pocket knife, a stun gun, a few acupuncture needles and a small can of mace." I answered honestly and listed all the things that I wasn´t sure was okay to bring with me. "I have some other stuff as well like keys and my cell but those are the things I am unsure if I can bring with me or not." I added slowly.

"Lose everything except the wire for now, when Ranger decides that you are trustworthy you can bring whatever you want but for now let´s stay on his good side." Tank told me and I did just that before following the guys to the elevator. We all went up to the fifth floor which turned out to be where most of the work was done. We split up and since Tank, Lester and Cal was going back down to the third floor to work out, I asked if I could join them.

"You sure little one?" Tank asked me and while I usually resented being called little, I accepted it from him. Compared to him I was a midget.

"Of course I´m sure, I haven´t had a decent work out in like forever." I told him confidently. "Would it be possible to borrow a shirt and a pair of shorts or do I have to go back down to the car and grab some?"

"You can borrow some of mine gorgeous." Santos told me with a flirty smile and handed me some clothes. I smiled back in thanks before walking straight into their locker room to change, leaving the guys standing outside with open mouths. They were still in that position three minutes later when I exited the locker room and asked them.

"Did I break you already? I only changed my clothes what´s the big deal?" They all shared a look before shaking their heads, going into the locker room as I made my way over to the treadmill to start my workout. I ran for about an hour before moving on to lifting weights for another thirty minutes. After that I usually swam for at least another hour but since I didn´t see a pool I decided that a spar would have to do. I looked around the room to see who was available and when my eyes locked onto Lester Santos, a smile crept onto my lips.

"Yo Santos! Wanna spar?" I yelled over the noise and music that filled the large room. He wiped some sweat off his face and asked me seriously.

"You think you can take me?"

"I don´t know but I´d like to find out if you don´t mind? Or are you afraid of being defeated by a girl?" I taunted him and grinned widely all the while. The other guys that were in the gym with us all shouted encouragements at him and some of the braver ones even sent some mild insults at him for hesitating when it was so obvious that I wanted a fight.

It worked and he pulled of his shirt as he closed in on me where I was standing by the mats. Someone threw him a roll of tape which he passed on to me before accepting another roll from Tank. We both taped our hands and I also taped up my right knee for support, I had injured it a few years back and there was a chance that it would give out on me without the extra support. The man named Bobby told us both the rules, which were the same as I was used fighting by, and also told us that he would be the judge and had the right to stop the spar at any time if he felt it necessary. We both agreed to the rules and then a bell rang to indicate the start of the spar.

At first neither of us moved and I could see that he was surprised, they all were in fact. But I wasn´t stupid enough to go directly for the offensive when I didn´t had a clue about his fighting style, no, I was waiting for him to come for me. After all, I didn´t want to show off all of my special skills, I´d rather lose this spar then reveal too much.

Then he came at me, feinting right before going left with a vicious right hook. I waited until the very last second before dropping to the floor in a complete split, surprising him enough that he stumbled and left himself open for me to deliver a hard punch on his thigh. The punch didn´t do much damage but it wasn´t supposed to, it hurt like hell though and that was its main purpose. It would leave a bruise and he would be sore for a few days at least though…

I got back on my feet and sensing that he was coming at me again, this time from my blind spot, I immediately spun around in a brutal roundhouse kick that connected with his ribs, pushing him off course. I kept spinning though and slammed my right fist hard against his jaw making him collapse on the ground.

Bobby appeared at his side in a second but Santos only pushed him away, insisting that he was fine. He stood up, slightly shaky, and turned towards me. He wore an honest, open smile despite the beating I had given him and he told me.

"Damn gorgeous you really pack a punch! But don´t expect to be able to land another hit, I won´t underestimate you again." I only smiled back and told him.

"Good, then I might actually get a challenge this time." We waited until the bell rang again before having another go at each other and this time we were much more even. We exchanged blows and kicks for what felt like forever, and while we were rather even, I was better at deflecting and dodging and wouldn´t have as many marks on my body when we were done fighting. I also hadn´t used any of my special moves so I knew I could take him down if I really wanted to.

He landed an especially hard one in the middle of my chest, forcing the air from my lungs and for a second I wondered if he had managed to crack a rib or two. I decided that he hadn´t but used the pain and slight anger to launch into a flurry of attacks that had him down on his knees and then down on his back within a few seconds. And that was only by increasing my attack speed.

The room went totally quiet when he didn´t get up and instead stayed on the floor, panting as if he had run a marathon. Not that I was any better myself but then the room suddenly erupted in cheers and I put my hand out for Santos to grab. He accepted it and I pulled him to his feet, surprising him once again.

"Damn girl, remind me to never piss you off…" The one named Cal said loudly as he got a good look at Santos still blooming bruises. The ones who heard him chuckled and I got the feeling that I had been accepted by these guys already. But suddenly everyone went quiet and I looked up to see Stephanie and Ranger standing in the doorway. Stephanie had a small smile on her face but Ranger looked completely serious and not very happy. He gave both Santos and I a good once-over before demanding an explanation from Tank.

"They sparred, she won." He answered simply and gestured to the two of us, Santos and I had equal smiles on our faces and his arm was slung over my shoulders.

"I told you she would fit right in here!" Stephanie said excitedly and bounced up to stand next to Bobby. Rangers face relaxed and I saw an almost smile on his lips as he looked over Santos many bruises.

"Damn cousin you really took a beating here, and from a girl nonetheless." Santos only smiled wider and told him confidently.

"That I did. I believe that she could even take you down if she put her mind to it." Ranger moved his eyes from Santos and onto me, replying.

"We´ll have to have a spar and see sometimes, even if I doubt she can take me down that easily. But for now we have a business to run and we can´t do that with almost all personnel down in the gym."

He wasn´t angry, or even upset but it didn´t take more than 15 seconds before the gym was empty except for Ranger, Santos, Bobby, Stephanie and I. Bobby was checking Santos over and I watched amused as he winced when Bobby poked at his bruises as Stephanie and Ranger had a small conversation. But when Bobby was finished with Santos and turned and reached for me I flinched and took a step back, I hadn´t realized that he would want to look me over as well and I didn´t like it. Bobby noticed my reactions and stopped but said.

"I have to check you over as well Kat, its Rangeman policy to always get checked over after a spar ever since one of our guys had to be rushed to the ER because of internal bleeding." I searched for the eyes of Stephanie, hoping that she would tell me that I didn´t have to do this but she only gave me a pitying look and shook her head. I moved my eyes to Ranger and saw determination in his eyes that told me that I didn´t have a choice. My shoulders slumped and I bowed my head, admitting defeat.

"Fine, but we´re not doing this here. Only Bobby can be there and I demand the same patient-doctor confidentiality used in hospitals, he can´t tell anyone here about anything he sees." I demanded and shot a look at Stephanie, knowing that she was the only one to understand the reason for my demand. I saw her eyes widen slightly as she remembered and then she turned her head and whispered something to Ranger who nodded and told me that my way was acceptable.

"Take her to your office Bobby, send her to my office when you´re done." Then he, Steph, Tank and Santos left the gym. Bobby gave me a long, hard look before he gestured for me to follow him. I knew he was curious about why I was so adamant that he didn´t tell anyone about he saw when examining me and I would give him an explanation as soon as we were safely away from all curious ears that might be listening in. I didn´t necessarily want to explain it to him but I knew that I had to if I wanted him to keep quiet, but it would also mean that there was another person who knew my story and I didn´t like it.

Only three people knew my story and that was quite enough.

We reached his office soon since it was also on the third floor and as soon as the door closed behind me Bobby was demanding that I´d lose my shirt, apparently he had noticed the hard hit Santos had manage to land earlier.

"Careful Brown, a girl might take that the wrong way you know." I said before pulling my shirt off as he had asked, feeling safe in the knowledge that if he tried something funny, I could take him down. Besides, Steph hated doctors and hospitals even more than I did and she let this man help her when she was hurt or sick, and if she trusted him so could I.

"That´s going to leave a nasty bruise, you´re lucky he didn´t crack a few ribs… Turn around for me please." Bobby said and I closed my eyes before turning, this was the part that I dreaded. I heard his sharp intake of breathe and then I was spun around so that we stood face to face again.

"What happened! Who did that to you Kat?" I looked to the side to get away from his angry, searching eyes and answered as shortly and avoiding as possible.

"I don´t want to tell you." I knew it was a feeble attempt but I really didn´t expect such a powerful reaction from a man I had just met.

"Don´t want to tell me! For fucks sake Kat someone has whipped you and you haven´t told anyone?" Brown more or less yelled at me and I simply returned his outburst with a glare that made him flinch a little.

"Three people know the whole story about what happened to me and that is enough, this is exactly why I didn´t want you to examine me. If anyone else finds out about this, you´ll be in trouble Brown." And then I left, with the threat hanging in the air between me and his surprised self. I didn´t care that Ranger was expecting me in his office, I went straight down to the garage and got into my car, leaving despite still being dressed in Santos spare gym clothes.

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Please let me know what you think! Is it worth continuing?

Love C


	2. Chapter 2 - Catching a Skip

Disclaimer: I do not own any recognizable characters, I do own Kat though.

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**AN:** I want to thank all of you for your fantastic support of the beginning of this story. Your reviews made my day.

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**DRAGON**

_Chapter Two – Catching a skip_

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**Stephanie POV**

I was with Ranger in his office when there was a knock on the door, interrupting the panty-melting make-out session I was having with my very own batman. Ranger sighed as he pulled away but called out to the person behind the door to enter anyway.

I was surprised to see that it was Bobby and that he arrived without Kat but then I realized what must´ve happened and felt myself going straight into rhino-mode, the only thing keeping me in Rangers lap was his hands on my waist.

"Why is Kat not with you?" I got out from between clenched jaws and he shot me a surprised look before remorsefully admitting with his head low.

"I might have said something or done something because she threatened me to make sure I kept quiet about what I saw before she left the building in her car, still wearing Santos gym clothes."

I had heard enough. I pried Rangers hands off me, walked straight up to Bobby and punched him in the nose before hurrying out of Rangers office to go and find Kat.

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**Kat POV**

I was driving aimlessly through the city, trying to get a grip on myself and figure out where to go next. The only problem was that I had nowhere left to run. After I was officially out of the military I returned to LA, hoping to leave my nightmares behind me. It didn´t work… But then I met Scott and things got better for a while. Then I was sent on another mission.

The mission went FUBAR almost before it had begun and I had to go through pure hell in order to return home alive. But I did it because I believed that I had Scott, waiting for me to come home to him… Had I not believed that I prbably hadn´t made it home. But oh so very wrong I was... As soon as I entered LA I was arrested and accused of his murder, which led me straight into another kind of hellish nightmare.

So when everything was finally straightened out, and the real killer was behind bars, the only thing I wanted was to go home and never come out again. Only when I did reach my home, it was no longer there. That was the straw that broke the camel´s back.

So I left and headed for Trenton, praying that my old friend from school would be able to help put me back together. Browns reaction was simply the element that made my badly and hastily repaired mind shatter a little more. But no one that didn´t know me very well could see that, I was a master at hiding how I truly felt.

I was pulled back to the present and realized that I somehow had managed to get back to Stephanie's apartment. I was sitting in the car down in her parking lot so I got out and went up to her door. I knew she had locked it when we left but seriously, I had no trouble picking her locks and let myself in. As soon as I got in I relocked the door and collapsed on the couch, curling myself into a ball and tried to hold myself together for a little while longer.

xXx xXx xXx

I didn´t know how much time had passed since I entered Steph´s apartment but I knew it hadn´t been very long when I heard the door being unlocked and Steph´s voice rang out.

"Kat? Are you here?"

"Of course I´m here Steph, didn´t you see my car down in the parking lot?" I asked her and looked up as she entered the room. She blushed and I realized that she actually had forgotten to look for my car in her search for me.

"Dear god Steph how do you manage to catch any skips?" I asked her while fighting laughter, Steph always managed to make me feel better.

"Spidey sense and connections in the burg helps but there´s also luck and the aid from Ranger and his merry men." She answered and I could tell by the look in her eyes that at least the last part wasn´t meant to be out loud. I burst into laughter and asked her.

"Really Steph? Merry men? Do they know that you refer to them as such? I´m sure that can´t be good for their badass image." She blushed and I took her silence as that they didn´t know.

"Don´t worry Steph I´m not going to tell them, I´m not even sure I wanna go back there at all right now…" That made Stephanie forget her embarrassment and she locked eyes with me.

"Yeah about that, what did Bobby do? I need to know if one punch to the nose was enough or if I need to make his life a living hell. Either way I´m sorry, he´s always been very kind to me and I foolishly believed that the same would extend to you." She looked away angrily and I sighed before gesturing to her to sit on the couch with me before I tried to explain what had happened.

"One punch will do Steph, he didn´t do anything he just reacted badly to finding my scars… And just because I didn´t want to tell him what had happened, he made it sound as if I had let someone do that to me, and now refused to tell anyone. How come everyone forgets or ignores that I have spent 13 years in the military? 10 of those years was spent on doing missions no one else wanted to do so why do everybody give me such a hard time about my scars now? If I had been a man no one would have questioned that I have scars from my time in the navy but it seems like just because I am a woman, I can´t have scars because I couldn´t possibly have done such missions!" I was out of breath after my angry rant but I sure felt a lot better.

"I´m sorry Bobby made you feel like that… Do you mind if I tell Ranger so that he can reprimand Bobby? It´s not right of him to treat you differently just because you´re a woman…" Stephanie asked after a little while when I had been able to calm down again.

"Fine but I want to tell him myself, do you think he would agree to meet us for dinner? I could cook us something…" I answered after some thought and saw Stephanie's eyes glitter with joy at the thought of eating my cooking. Not to brag but I wasn´t bad in the kitchen, I just preferred not to have to cook.

"I´ll call him, I have to ask if he has someone who can come with me and catch some of the high-level skips anyway…"

"I can go with you." I offered without a second thought. "I have the license since I did it from time to time in LA and surely you and I can take them down?" I told her with a confident smile on my lips. She immediately brightened up and accepted my offer.

"That would be great! Let me just call Ranger and book him for dinner tonight and then we can go." She told me and pushed a few buttons on her phone as I excused myself to get ready; I needed to put on all of my equipment that I normally wore for work and change out of Santos gym clothes and into a new pair of cargo pants and tank top, both of them navy blue this time. That equipment included my two guns, extra ammo for the same guns in a special clip on my belt, my two knives, my length of wire, my stun gun which was also clipped to my belt as was my can of mace. I had two pair of handcuffs in a special holster on my belt as well as a powerful yet small flashlight. In the pockets of my cargo pants were my cell, my wallet, my keys, my pocketknife, two set of lock picks in different pockets and a lighter. I also had several acupuncture needles hidden on multiple places on my body. I placed a navy SEAL cap on my head as well as a pair of sunglasses and felt ready to roll.

"Damn Kat do you think we´re going to invade a small country or something?" I heard Steph say from behind me and I turned around to see that she was holding her phone out for me to take.

"Ranger wants to have a word with you." She explained and handed me the phone before I could protest. I sighed and put the phone to my ear.

"Yeah?"

_"Kat? It´s Ranger, Babe says you´re going with her to catch some skips?"_

"Yeah that´s right, what? You don´t think I can watch her back as well as one of your sexist employees?" I couldn´t keep my irritation completely from my voice but I don´t think Ranger cared about that.

_"I don´t know enough about you to make that call, that´s why I wanted to talk to you. We can talk about my 'sexist employees' tonight."_

"Fine, what do you want to know? I`ll give you five questions, make them count." I told him impatiently. I knew from Stephanie that no one dared to speak to Ranger the way I just did but I didn´t care about that, if he was offended by my tone of voice he could take it up with me later and I might consider to listen to him.

_"How long did you serve in the military? What branch? What was your grade? Do you have experience? Are you armed?"_

"13 years in total, navy, a navy SEAL commanding officer, yes, armed enough for this type of work yes." There was a moment of silence and if I would have to guess I would say that I had surprised him.

"So, am I trusted to watch out for Steph or not?" I asked when he didn´t respond quickly enough for my thin patience.

_"You are, I´ll see you two tonight."_ And then he hung up on me.

xXx xXx xXx

I was still fuming about him hanging up on me like that when Steph and I reached the parking lot but Steph told me that they all did that and that you got used to it after a while. I was about to head for my car when Steph held me back and instead pulled me towards a large black SUV.

"You´ve got a new car already?" I asked her, surprise showing in my voice.

"No, not really… Ranger usually lends me a car when mine blows up until I have the time and the money to buy another one. But I guess you could say it´s a loaner." She answered and unlocked the car before taking her place behind the steering wheel.

I jumped into the car as well and buckled myself in as she pulled out from her parking lot and started telling me about the skip we was about to bring in.

"The skips name is Martin Thornton, Caucasian and 28 years old with no tattoos or other identifications. He´s an abusive drunk as well as an uprising drug-dealer and he managed to put his girlfriend in the ER one night, he drives an old Chevy pickup truck and is currently without a job. He lives down on Stark Street and is probably still sleeping off a hangover from the night before."

I nodded my understanding and used the rest of the ride to mentally prepare myself for the takedown. It wasn´t long before Stephanie pulled up in front of a wreck of a house that seemed more likely to collapse in on itself than survive another two weeks. We got out and Steph locked the car before striding up to the house and walking inside with me following closely behind her.

Thornton was living on the second floor of the building and we made our way up there while trying not to gag from the putrid smells that came from all the garbage that had been left out in the hallway to rot. Steph knocked on the door but when we didn´t hear any sounds coming from inside the apartment after knocking for five minutes I attacked the lock with my lock picks and not even ten seconds later the door opened for us. Steph was about to go inside but I stopped her and told her.

"Please let me go first? I don´t want to tell Ranger that I got you hurt because then he´ll never allow me to come with you again." She nodded slowly but said.

"He doesn´t have a say in who I chose to bring with me, the deal is that when the skip is on Stark Street I don´t go alone. He should do well to remember that just because we are dating he doesn´t own me."

"You can argue with him about it later. Now we have a skip to catch." I told her and entered the dark, smelly apartment. The apartment was in the same terrible condition as the rest of the house and I even saw that one of the walls had crumbled and gave us a clear view in to the clearly unused kitchen. Stephanie was trailing behind me and I heard her gag when we passed a bathroom that should have a biohazard warning sign on the door but then I spotted another closed door that almost certainly led to the bedroom where our skip hopefully was waiting for us.

I signed for Steph to be quiet as I moved closer and silently opened the door an inch to see if he was in the room or not. He was. I could hear him snoring as soon as I opened the door. I motioned for Steph to come closer and whispered to her that we should sneak in and cuff him while he was asleep to avoid the trouble he would certainly cause us otherwise. She nodded her agreement and we tip-toed inside the room and crept up to the bed unnoticed. Steph reached out with her handcuffs and clapped one end of them around the skips wrist, but as soon as the cold metal clicked shut, the skip awoke and in one smooth movement his other hand went underneath his pillow, searching for a weapon.

I yelled at Steph to get down in case he was grasping for a gun but when I reached out to stop him I saw the glimmer of a knife and knew that he at least didn´t have a gun under his pillow. He lashed out at me with the knife but I jumped back and aimed a punch at the side of his head. My punch connected and his head cracked against the headboard of his bed, rendering him unconscious. What a wimp…

"Are you alright Kat?" Steph asked me as she locked the skips other wrist in the handcuffs as well.

"Yeah I´m fine, the knife never touched me." I assured her without taking my eyes off the skip just in case he was faking unconsciousness.

"I guess I better call Rangeman and have them send out a backup, it´s not like we can get him down the stairs on our own." Steph said with a sigh but I just looked at her and told her.

"Sure we can, I can carry him. He can´t weigh more than about 185 lbs and when I do missions my backpack weighs 150 lbs and I carry that around all day long without much trouble. I´m positive I can get this bastard down a few stairs."

"Well if you´re sure…" She trailed off when I slung the deadweight of our skip over my shoulders in a fireman´s grip and walked out of the apartment and down the creaking stairs. I have to admit that I was a little worried that the stairs would give out underneath me but thankfully that didn´t happen. When we reached the street outside I got a little confused though…

"Steph we did park the car here right?" I asked her and let the skips body fall to the ground, not caring if he got a little bruised.

"Yes we did why do you… Oh for fuck´s sake give me a break!" Steph exclaimed as she saw that the car was gone, that someone had stolen it while we were in the house catching the skip. She pulled her phone from her pocket and pushed speed dial, waiting for the call to go through with her eyes closed in frustration.

"Ranger we have a problem, someone stole the car." She said when he picked up.

"No everything went fine, the skip is unconscious and in cuffs but we need someone to come pick us up, we´re in the middle of Stark Street as you know and since our skip is a drug dealer there are people here who might not like us taking him away for prison." She explained and then nodded before telling him thanks and putting her phone away.

"Will we be picked up or shall we start walking?" I asked her in an attempt to lighten the mood. She smiled and told me that Santos was on his way so we sat down on the sidewalk to wait for him. Ten minutes later I saw Steph tense up and I asked her.

"Something wrong wildcat?"

"Yeah, I think that trouble might be closing in." She answered with her eyes locked on a small group of men that were quickly closing in on us. There were only three of them but I could see that all of them were armed and had gang tattoos. I stood up with my hands hovering over my guns and noticed that Steph followed my lead, her gun suddenly in her hand instead of in her handbag. The three young men stopped a few steps away from us and the middle one of them demanded.

"If you know what´s good for you, you release Thornton now."

"And if I don´t?" I asked them, calmly but on my guard and prepared for action.

"Then you won´t live to regret it." He answered and pulled out his gun, pointing it at my forehead. His two friends quickly followed his lead and one gun was trained on Steph while another one was trained on my chest. At the same moment I drew my own two guns and trained them on the men in front of us and I saw Steph do the same. I moved a little so that I was protecting her with my own body and prayed that she allowed me to do that and didn´t move herself.

I kept my eyes on the leader, knowing that if this went to hell, he would be making the first movement. But he didn´t move and kept us in the locked positions we were in. I was used to going into battle and knew how to handle all the adrenaline that was rushing through my body, Steph on the other hand didn´t and I could tell that the tension of this situation and the fear she felt was taking a toll on her. But I couldn´t do anything to help her other than trying to keep her safe by protecting her with my own body and waiting for Santos to arrive.

Thankfully I heard the sound of an engine closing in on us not even a minute after everyone pulled out their guns and when another black Rangeman SUV pulled in on the street we were on, the leader looked over his shoulder, cursed, then glared at me before starting to back away. Apparently stark street had a healthy amount of respect for Rangeman and their employees. The SUV came to a halt with screeching tires and the caramel skinned, green eyed man I had met earlier came rushing out.

"Beautiful are you okay? Are you hurt?" I rolled my eyes at the worry he displayed in Steph´s direction, I don´t think he has even noticed me standing next to her and it was slightly frustrating.

"Of course I´m fine, do I look hurt to you? Kat is just as protective of me as you guys, have some faith in her please." She answered him and glared at him until he acknowledged me as well. When his eyes landed on me for the first time since jumping out of the car I saw them widen slightly but I didn´t know why, I soon got an explanation though.

"Lester! stop staring at Kat! She is not going to be another one of your conquests, understood? I know she´s probably some kind of wet dream come true for you guys with all the weapons she carries but dammit I won´t let you do that to her!" Steph told him and I realized that his eyes had widened because he thought I was hot, I also realized that he was a player and I turned away from both Santos and Steph to pick up our skip again before walking up to the car, asking them since they were talking and hadn´t noticed me moving.

"Are we going to get this mother-fucker to the station today or what? I still have to shop for tonight and the clock is ticking." I was standing next to the car and Steph just smiled and took her place in the front passenger seat but Santos remained standing on the sidewalk, his eyes searching for something that wasn´t there.

"Where´s the skip?" He asked me and I answered with thinly veiled annoyance.

"In the car. Now come on, I have more stuff to do today you know."

"How did he get there?" He asked while walking up so that he was standing next to me, looking at the skip in the backseat. I had had enough of sexist Rangeman for one day so I slammed him against the car, stepped as close to him as I could without pressing my body against his and said angrily.

"I carried him. And if I hear one more sexist comment from any Rangeman employee I am going to do something drastic. I´m ex-military too! I was in the navy for thirteen fucking years and I spent ten of those as a navy SEAL commanding officer doing the missions no one else wanted, is it so fucking strange that I have some muscle-strength after that!? That I have scars!? No! So stop treating me like I´m some fucking civilian!" I yelled in his face and despite being shorter than his 6 feet 2 inches at 5 feet 9 inches I felt like a giant looking down at a midget when staring into his emerald green eyes and waiting for his response.

He was silent for a long time and I started wondering if he was going to say something at all. I sneaked a look in Stephanie's direction and when she motioned for me to wait, I did. She had told me that she considered Santos to be one of her best friends, that she held him just as close to her heart as she did me and that she thought that the two of us should go along just fine. Of course that was said this morning before I had met any of them, but I guess that depending on how he responded now, we would see if she was right or not. I found myself kind of hoping that she would be right and that I would be able to make friends with Santos, more for her sake than my own but let´s not go there.

"I´m sorry." He spoke so quietly that I first thought I had imagined it, but then I looked up and saw the seriousness in his beautiful green eyes and he spoke again.

"I´m really sorry Kat… You´re right, we have kind of treated you like a civilian when it is obvious that you are more like us. I shouldn´t have been surprised that you could carry the skip, I know very well how heavy the backpacks for the missions are. I will do my best to remember that you´re not a civilian. Will you forgive me?" He asked me and I couldn´t help the small smile that entered my lips, he was kind of sweet, I could see how Steph considered him one of her best friends.

"It´s alright Santos, I shouldn´t have yelled at you like that but Bobby really set me on edge this morning. I´m sorry too." I told him honestly and watched as what I started to believe was his signature crooked smile entered his lips. It faded a little when he realized that my bad mood was caused by Bobby though, and he asked.

"Yeah about that, what did Bobby do? I mean, he is our medic and I can´t imagine what he could have done to earn a punch in the nose from beautiful, do I have to take him to the mats?" He asked and I realized that he was serious with his offer of taking Bobby to the mats.

"I don´t want to talk about it right now but… I´m cooking dinner tonight so that I can talk to Ranger about it, why don´t you join us?" I asked him and then nervously waited for his answer. Since Steph trusted him I figured I could do that too, especially now that he apologized when he didn´t really have to.

"Sure, I can do that." He told me with a nod and a smile and I sighed in relief before getting in the car, indicating for him to do the same.

"Then we better get going so I will have enough time to finish everything." I told him and shut the door firmly.

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Please let me know what you think? You´re reviews are gold to me!

Love C


	3. Chapter 3 - Joe Morelli

I don´t own anything except for Kat and the storyline

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**DRAGON**

_Chapter Three - Joe Morelli_

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Santos had driven us to the police station so that we could drop off Thornton before he took us back to Steph´s apartment. He dropped us off and promised that he and Ranger would be back by six, Steph headed directly up to the apartment to clean it and I got into my own car to go to the grocery store. And since Steph didn´t cook, I needed a lot of things.

I bought what I called basic stuff like milk, eggs, bread, vegetables, chicken and some meats. For tonight I picked up some salmon, potatoes, carrots, parsnip and some expensive smoked salt to season with.

I returned to the apartment only to find the door wide open and raised voices from inside. I quickly put the grocery bags down, drew my weapons and quietly crept closer. I was worried about Steph but since I heard her argue with an unknown male I figured that she was unharmed for now at least. I peeked around the corner and saw a male standing with his back to me, he was yelling at Steph and she was yelling right back. The man was a bit taller than me but not as much as Santos. He had black curly hair and I quickly deducted that he had an Italian heritage. He had to be the Joe Morelli that more or less raped her when we were sixteen and then turned out to be her first skip. I thought she said that they had been broken up for a few months now, apparently he didn´t get the memo that it meant that he could no longer just waltz in here and demand stuff from her. He made a move and I realized that he was about to hit her so I allowed my instincts to take over and practically flew through the room until I was standing behind him with one of my guns against his head.

"Don´t you dare!" I warned him and while he was smart enough not to move, he wasn´t smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

"What the hell Cupcake! You called one of Rangers goons?"

"She did not. I do not work for Rangeman." I told him, deadly calm. He turned his head slowly to look at me when he realized that I was a woman. I guess he didn´t noticed that when I warned him not to move, I was slightly insulted but it might have had something to do with my gun against his head…

"Well look what we have here, a wanna-be army girl. Do you have a license to carry? Otherwise I have to take you down to the station; I might even throw in some charges for assaulting a police officer." He told me with what he probably assumed was a threatening tone of voice and a sneer on his face.

"Trust me; I am no wanna-be. I do have a license in fact, but I have no intention of showing it to you. You´re the one breaking the law here officer, not me." I replied calmly, I was in control here and he could taunt me as much as he wanted to, I wasn´t going to lose control.

"Oh really? Cupcake and I was just talking, where´s the crime in that?" I heard Steph growl out that she didn´t want to be called cupcake but I didn´t let it get to me and instead told him.

"Well for starters there´s the forced entry, the harassment and threats against me, then there´s also the assault that almost happened. Face it officer, she wants nothing to do with you." That got a reaction out of him and he turned towards me with a roar and clipped me in the face with a heavy glass bowl he picked up from the side table next to him. The glass bowl shattered on impact and I felt a few shards lodge in my skin.

I could have stopped him from hitting me but I didn´t, I wanted the advantage of being able to charge him with assault if necessary but I had expected him to use his fist, not a weapon. I didn´t let the slight pain stop me and instead simply knocked him out using a pressure point on his neck. I cuffed him and then sat him up so that he was leaning against the wall before I turned towards Steph to ask if she was okay. She was on the phone and I saw her eyes widen when she saw my face. I knew that there was some shards stuck in my skin but I didn´t know how bad it was so I walked to her bathroom to take a look while she finished her call.

I turned the lights on and frowned at my appearance, there was a few shards stuck as I knew and also a few small cuts that were bleeding a little. I also had a feeling that I would get a nasty bruise. But it wasn´t too serious, it looked much worse than it actually was. I left the bathroom and returned to the living room where Steph just had put her phone away again.

"Oh my god Kat I´m so sorry! Are you okay? Do you need to go to the hospital?" She asked me and tried to wipe away some of the blood from my face but I pulled away.

"I´m fine Steph don´t worry, I let him hit me so I can charge him with assault. I don´t need to go to the hospital either, these are just shallow cuts, I might need some help with removing the shards of glass that are still stuck though."

"Oh, well I called Eddie and him and Big Dog is on their way here, Rangeman should be here any minute now as well." I knew that Eddie Gazarra, the one they call Big Dog and Carl Costanza were all police officers and friends of Stephanie but I didn´t know why Rangeman was on their way, had she called them too?

"Why are Rangeman on their way? Did you call them as well?" I asked her and saw through her window how another black Rangeman SUV pulled into her parking lot, how did they get here so fast?

"No I didn´t call them, they managed to convince me to install some cameras about a month ago, they should have everything on tape just in case Morelli gives you trouble." She told me with a smile that I returned, that made my day so much better even if I didn´t like that I hadn´t known about the cameras, what if I had walked around here naked? I almost laughed after that thought, even if I had wandered around naked it wouldn´t have bothered me, military does that to a person.

We both heard thundering footsteps in the hallway that indicated that the guys from Rangeman had arrived and apparently they didn´t know that the danger was over. The first one through the open doorway was Tank, I recognized him from this morning since he, and all of them really, were rather easy to remember. The other one that came in after him was no other than Santos.

"Hi guys!" She greeted them with a smile and a finger wave and I saw how they both visibly relaxed.

"What happened here little girl?" Asked Tank and gestured towards the unconscious Morelli. I stood leaning against the wall furthest from them and tried to keep them from seeing my injured face. Under absolutely no circumstances did I want them to call Bobby.

"Well Morelli showed up and said he wanted to talk to me so I opened the door. I hadn´t planned on letting him inside the apartment but he shoved his way inside and started yelling at me what an embarrassment I was and how I should quit my job and marry him because I sucked at my job and Ranger only stayed with me out of pity. He was just about to hit me since I refused to go with him and told him that I would never be with him again in any way when Kat came back from the store and saved the day so to speak. She put her gun to his head and warned him about what he was about to do, then he tried to taunt her but she stayed calm and instead he was the one who lost control. He smashed my glass bowl in her face before she knocked him out; she said that she allowed him to hit her so that she could charge him with assault." She told them and I felt all three of them stare at me. Then Santos asked me.

"Hey are you okay gorgeous? How´s your face?" I didn´t want to show them but I realized that it was futile to try and hide any longer so I faced them fully and answered him.

"I´m fine, it´s just bruises and shallow cuts, it will heal." I heard all three of them suck in a breath and I figured that the bruise had started to show as well, I knew it would look much worse while being purple.

"I think we need to call Bobby little one." Tank told me and had pulled his phone from his belt when I told him, dead serious.

"If you call Bobby here I will leave, right now." I kept my gaze locked with his until he sighed and put the phone away again.

"Fine little one, but Ranger´s not going to be happy about it…"

"He doesn´t have to be, but I don´t work for Rangeman so you can´t force me to do anything I don´t want to." I told him, calmly now that the threat of Bobby coming here was out of the way. Santos walked closer until he was standing right in front of me and he was looking at my injured face with watchful eyes.

"There´s some glass still stuck in your skin gorgeous, you have to get them all out otherwise it could get infected." He told me and I saw his hand twitch as if he wanted to reach up and touch me but didn´t allow himself to. I didn´t know how I felt about him wanting to touch me like that, true I was starting to like him but come on, we´ve just met and I don´t know anything about him. I decided to drop those thoughts for now and said.

"I know but I´m waiting for the cops to get here so they can document everything before I clean myself up." I told him and walked out in the hallway to fetch the grocery bags before the frozen stuff had time to thaw and go bad. I put everything away and just as I was finished I heard new voices in the living room.

"Oh crap what has Morelli done this time Steph?" I joined them just as Steph finished telling Eddie and Big Dog about what had happened. Both of them flinched as they saw the condition my face was in and it didn´t take long for me to file the charges, get the documentation of my injuries done and give them a copy of the security tape. Twenty minutes later they left with Morelli still unconscious.

"Will you be alright little girl? Little one? I need to go back to the office." Tank asked both Steph and I. I thought it was really sweet of him to include me, even if he didn´t have to. My new nickname even matched Stephanie's, she was little girl and I was little one, it was kind of cute but if anyone else except for this giant of a man tried calling me that, I would castrate them.

"Yes we´ll be fine Big Guy, there´s no need to worry about us." Steph assured him.

"I always worry about you little girl. Santos are you coming or are you staying? I need to get back; I have a date with Lula tonight."

"I´ll stay here, I can catch a ride home with Ranger later. See you tomorrow and don´t do anything I wouldn´t do!" Santos replied with a huge smile at which Tank only stared with a deadpanned expression.

"I don´t think it is possible for me to do something that you wouldn´t do Santos, I don´t even know if there actually is something that you won´t do… See you tomorrow guys." Tank responded before he left as well. As soon as the door closed behind him Steph locked it and engaged both her security chain and deadbolt. I took a look at the clock and almost panicked; I was running behind in my schedule and would need some help. I turned towards Stephanie asked her.

"Steph can you help me? I´m running behind on my schedule and I really need a shower, I need to clean up and get the glass out but I also need to get started on dinner. Can you do that while I shower and clean up? I promise I´ll hurry and you don´t need to do anything difficult." She looked at me like a deer in headlight and I had a feeling that she didn´t answer because she didn´t want to tell me no even if she felt like she couldn´t help me. Thankfully Santos was here as well.

"Of course we´ll help you Gorgeous, don´t worry Beautiful I´ll help you in the kitchen. What do we need to do?"

"I need you to peel potatoes, carrots and parsnip and slice them into thin slices. Then you put them in a baking dish, sprinkle some oil on top and season with salt and pepper before you put it in the oven to roast." I told them and they both nodded before disappearing into the kitchen. I fetched some clean clothes from one of my three bags that were in a corner of the living room and even before I reached the bathroom I heard laughter from the kitchen. I couldn´t help but smile as I locked the bathroom door behind me.

I showered quickly and with my jaws clenched against the sting of water and shampoo on my face before drying off and dressing in clean underwear. I pulled on a pair of navy blue cargo pants and a white tank top before moving all of my things from the pockets of the old pants into the new ones. I then grabbed some tweezers and moved closer to the mirror to try and get the glass out. After five minutes of swearing since I only managed to hurt myself I gave up, opened the door and called for Stephanie to come and help me. She left the kitchen and looked at me questioningly. I gave her the tweezers and told her that I couldn´t get the glass out myself. She hesitantly took the tweezers from me and I could read it on her face that she was afraid that she was going to hurt me.

"Don´t worry Steph you´re not going to hurt me, not more than I hurt myself at least. It´s okay you don´t need to be afraid." I reassured her and she gently gripped a piece of glass with the tweezers and pulled. Only she didn´t have the hand strength to pull it out and instead only made it hurt, I gritted my teeth but told her to try again so she did, only this time she slipped and the sharp glass cut even deeper, making blood once again make an appearance. I quickly pressed a small towel gently against my face to keep the blood from staining the white tank top I wore while trying to keep my cussing to a minimum as to not scare Steph or make her believe I blamed her.

"Oh dammit… Lester!" She yelled and I heard her leave the small bathroom to allow Santos to take her place. I heard her talking to him right outside the door when he wondered what was happening.

"I can´t pull the shards of glass out, I don´t have enough strength in my hands. I slipped and I think I hurt her, she´s bleeding again…" Steph told him and then I heard the rustle of clothes, I believe he gave her a hug, before he told her.

"Don´t worry about it Beautiful, I´ll help her, it´s no problem." Steph answered something I didn´t hear and then there was a light knock on the door before Santos showed his face in the doorway.

"Need some help Gorgeous?" He asked with a smile and I took away the towel from my face and told him.

"Please?" He grabbed the tweezers but then stopped, looked at the height difference between us and grabbed the stuff we would need before leaving the room and going back to the kitchen. I followed him without a word since I understood that he wouldn´t be able to get the glass out if he had to bend down to see what he was doing. And since there was no counter in Steph´s tiny bathroom, the kitchen would have to do.

I jumped up to sit on the kitchen counter without having to be told to and suddenly found myself face to face with Santos. He didn´t hesitate when he used the tweezers to grab a piece of glass and when he pulled it out, it went out easily and without much pain. He put all the glass shards in a small cup that Steph gave him and when he was done there were more glass shards in the cup that I would have thought. I washed my face again to get the dried blood off and when I looked in the mirror I almost winced at my appearance, most of the right side of my face was purple and littered with small cuts that stung to be touched.

But it would heal and I had no time to worry about it, Ranger would be here soon and I still had to make a salad and cook the salmon. The salad was done in ten minutes thanks to my skill with knives and soon after that the salmon was done and Ranger was knocking on the door. It was time to get this dinner started.

I heard Stephanie go and open the door for Ranger and used the time while she greeted him to set the table. I then carried the bowl of salad, the baking dish of roasted potatoes, carrots and parsnip as well as the plate that contained the fish out to the table too. I had just put the last thing down when Stephanie, Santos and Ranger entered the room and took in the delicious smell from the food.

"Oh my god Kat this smells divine!" Steph complimented and hurried over to her seat to pile some food on her plate. Santos quickly followed her as well but Ranger remained standing, his eyes focused on my face. I was waiting for him to speak but he never did, instead he clapped me on the shoulder when he passed me to go and sit at the table and somehow, that simple gesture felt more honest than any words would. Because he treated me like an equal.

I took my seat at the table as well and just when I was about to start eating, a moan broke the silence, making me chuckle and men at the table to shift uncomfortably. I loved that Stephanie was so vocal when she enjoyed her food, I had ever since she did it in high school and all the boys in the school canteen blushed and some even ran from the room to hide their hard-ons.

"It´s been way too long since I had the chance to taste your cooking Kat… It´s even better than I remember, this is just as good as Ella´s cooking and Ella´s cooking is the best!" Steph told me between moans.

"Thanks wildcat, but who´s Ella?" I asked her and took a bite, chewing the moist fish slowly.

"Ella is the one of two caretakers at Rangeman, she makes us food, cleans our apartments, makes sure we have clean clothes and stuff like that. She´s like a mother to all of us working there. Her husband, Luis, is the other caretaker and maintains the building. Beautiful is right, this food is super-delicious!" Santos told me while refilling his plate, he must´ve been hungry to eat a full portion that fast. Both Stephanie and Santos then looked expectantly at Ranger, clearly expecting him to compliment me for the food as well. He didn´t have to compliment me, I knew my food was good but it is always nice to hear it from others as well and he said.

"It is really good, Babe is right that you are on par with Ella." I beamed at him, having already figured out that he wasn´t a big talker. The dinner disappeared quickly and they told me about how Rangeman worked and some stories about Stephanie's early days as a bounty hunter to pass the time. When all of our plates were empty I stood to take care of the dishes but Ranger stopped me with a hand on my arm and took the plates from me.

"No, Santos and I will do the dishes. You and Babe can go sit on the couch." He told me and I tried to protest, he was a guest here after all and I had been the one to invite them.

"I can do the dishes, it´s no trouble…" I didn´t get further before Santos interrupted me.

"No you will not do the dishes, go sit. In our family, the one who cooks never have to do the dishes and those rules apply here as well."

"Fine." I told them and sat down on the couch, I knew when I was fighting a battle I couldn´t win. Stephanie sat down next to me and started talking about how we should plan a shopping trip with Mary-Lou, Connie and Lula. I agreed to her idea even if I wasn´t a big fan of shopping, I mostly wore cargo pants and tank tops and only occasionally a dress, I did like to wear luxurious lingerie though so a trip might not be a complete waste of time. When Ranger and Santos joined us again she had gotten me to agree to the trip and was busy texting the girls to set a date. Ranger took the last open spot on the couch, on the other side of Steph and Santos sat down in a plush armchair to my left. Ranger locked his eyes on me and asked.

"Ready to tell us what happened with Bobby this morning?" I sighed but nodded, the time for the talk was here.

* * *

Let me know what you think!

Love C


	4. 4 Talking and Bad Dreams

I do not own anything other than Kat

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**DRAGON**

_Chapter Four – Talking and Bad Dreams_

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RECAP: "Ready to tell us what happened with Bobby this morning?"

* * *

I made myself comfortable on the couch, took a deep breath and started talking. I had promised them to tell them what had happened and I kept my promises.

"He reacted very badly to some… scars, I have on my back." I told them hesitantly. "He got angry and wanted to know who had given me the scars, I didn´t want to tell him and then he assumed that I haven´t told anyone at all which isn´t true. Three people know the whole story. But what made me so angry was that he reacted so much to me having scars, I was in the navy, I was a SEAL commanding officer and I did those nasty missions our government pretends we doesn´t do of course I will have scars on my body! I know that most of the guys that work at Rangeman have probably done those kinds of missions too so it isn´t like he has never seen nasty scars before! If I had been a man none of this would have happened…" I stopped talking, brought my knees up against my chest and hid my face against them.

I didn´t want to be treated so differently just because I was a woman… I had done the same training as them, done the same kinds of missions and none of that seemed to matter. He would never treat one of their guys like he had treated me and that made me both angry and a little sad. Ever since I left the military I hadn´t felt like I fit in and I missed that feeling, this happening only made me feel even more alienated. I felt a warm hand land on my shoulder and I looked up to see Santos face close to mine.

"We´ll talk to Bobby about it at the morning meeting tomorrow Gorgeous, he shouldn´t have treated you like that, especially since he´s a medic. Not only was it sexist of him but why would he think that he had the right to know whatever he wanted to know? You had just met each other and you are not a Rangeman employee." Santos told me and Ranger nodded his agreement and said.

"Yeah this is unacceptable, he might be one of my closest friends, one of my brothers but there is no excuse for his behavior. I will make sure that nothing like this will happen again, at least not in my building." Ranger promised me and I gave him a faint smile.

"Thanks guys… I don´t want to cause any trouble though…" I told them and I meant it, if this was going to cause trouble within Rangeman or between men that were like brothers, it wasn´t worth it. I didn´t say any of it out loud but they understood it anyway and Ranger reassured me.

"Don´t worry about it Kat, it will be no trouble." I gave him a true smile this time, I felt lighter now that I wouldn´t have to deal with the prejudices anymore. The conversation turned lighter and after a few stories from when Stephanie first met her merry men Santos asked me.

"There´s something I don´t understand here, if you two are such good friends, how come we have never me you before? Or even heard of you?"

"I wondered about that too. And why I never heard of you while still in the army, shouldn´t we have done basic training together?" Ranger added. I simply watched the two of them for a long time, trying to decide if I could trust them enough to tell them some of my story. I leaned over and whispered in Steph´s ear.

"Should I tell them? Can I trust them?" Since she knew every ugly inch of my story I would trust her judgment on this one. She knew them a lot better than me after all, even if I had the feeling that I could trust them.

"Yes, you can trust them." She whispered back and I swallowed my nerves and decided to give them a chance.

"To answer those questions I would have to tell you a lot of my story, but if I´m going to do that I need you to promise not to tell anyone else. Of course you can tell the other guys at Rangeman some things but not everything, but this is going to take a while so if you have to be somewhere else in the next few hours I should probably tell you some other time…" I said and hugged my legs closer to my chest for some comfort, I was really nervous about telling them but I would do it if they wanted to know.

"We won´t tell anyone if you don´t want us to, right cousin?" Santos said and turned towards Ranger.

"Of course not, we have all things we don´t want everyone to know. We have plenty of time before we have to be somewhere else." I swallowed nervously and barely noticed as Steph got up from the couch and disappeared to the kitchen as I tried to figure out how to begin. Steph returned with a beer for each of us, put one in my hand and told me.

"Why don´t you start with how long we have known each other and how we met?" I smiled at her, thankful for both the beer and the advice and started telling them.

"I met Steph for the first time when we were six years old… We met each other in the emergency room at the hospital, she had broken her arm trying to fly and I had broken my wrist. We were both waiting to get our casts on so we started talking and immediately connected. We got our parents to talk and we started having play dates at each other´s houses. Then we were classmates in first grade and during our first school year we dragged Mary-Lou into our little group and the three of us were inseparable all the way until graduation." I told them and downed the last of my beer.

"Yeah those times were the best; we were known as the triplets amongst the teachers and went by our individual nicknames amongst our classmates." Steph said before standing up to grab some fresh beer for us. Santos eyes were shining with all the information he was given and as soon as Steph was out of earshot he asked me.

"What was Beautiful´s nickname in school? Please tell me Gorgeous!" He was almost begging me and I had to hold back laughter, he should be able to guess her nickname since I was still using it. I glanced at Ranger and judging by the almost smile on his lips and the laughter in his eyes, he had figured it out at least. Stephanie returned with our beer and judging by the smirk she wore, she had heard him almost beg me as well.

"You know Lester; you really should have picked up on my nickname by now. She still calls me wildcat after all." She told him before taking back her seat and sipping some of her beer before speaking again.

"I was called Wildcat because I had a tendency to do crazy things, Mary-Lou was the calm one in our group and her nickname was Serenity. I was loud and I did occasionally get into fights but it was Kat who were the most dangerous one in our group, she could be described as silent but deadly at the time and I believe that one still fits." She told them which earned me some more curious looks before Santos once again opened his mouth to speak.

"You can´t just leave it at that Beautiful! What was gorgeous nickname?" He whined and she shot me a quick look to make sure it was okay that she told him, I nodded and she answered.

"Her nickname was Dragon… Because she was, and is brave, strong and protective of those she loves." Everything went quiet and I knew that both Ranger and Santos had made the connection between my high-school nickname and the person I was in the navy.

Dragon was the name I went by since my first mission as a Navy Seal commanding officer and I was almost as legendary as Ranger and his team. Some of the missions I did were with a team but during most of them I was sent in alone, and since I was a woman you can imagine some of the things I had to go through.

I was afraid to look at Santos and Ranger, would they be angry with me for not telling them straight away? I didn´t have to worry for long because suddenly Steph pulled me in for a hug and while she was hugging me she once again whispered in my ear.

"It´s all right Dragon, you can look at them, it´s okay, they won´t judge you." She let go of me and backed away only enough so that I could take a peek at Ranger and Santos. They weren´t looking at me with angry eyes as I had feared, they looked at me with awe.

"You´re the Dragon? From the SEAL´s?" Santos asked with wide eyes and his mouth hanging open. I nodded and felt my confidence return as his open mouth turned into a smile. I moved my eyes from Santos to Ranger and saw that he too was looking at me with respect in his eyes and also something that I would describe as recognition. He knew of me and what kind of missions I did and he recognized that even he wouldn´t have been able to complete all of them, simply because he was no woman. But he recognized the difficulties I had gone through and that made me feel what I believed Steph felt for all of these guys.

They understood, they offered friendship and loyalty. They were family.

I felt the need to get back to my story, there was still a lot I could tell them and I was starting to feel embarrassed by Santos admiring looks.

"To get back to the story… After graduation our little trio split up and for the first time since we were children we were not together. Since we all chose very different paths to follow, we promised each other that we´d stay in contact by phone at least once a month and we kept to that promise. Stephanie as you probably know went to college to get a business degree, Mary-Lou got married to Lenny and I joined the navy. And the reason we didn´t have basic training together was probably because I enlisted in Los Angeles. I… I had to leave Trenton and as an eighteen year old, the other side of this country seemed just barely far away." I stopped and shared a look with Stephanie, she knew why I had to get away and that was something I had no intention of bringing up, at least not now…

"I spent thirteen years in the navy, ten of those as a navy SEAL commanding officer and I got out eleven months ago." I told them and then Ranger asked me a question.

"What made you leave LA and come back here? Are you in trouble?" That was a valid question for him to ask, I had after all more than one enemy since my days as a Seal that wanted me dead.

"I´m not in trouble. I won´t go into a lot of details but after I got out I started to work as a P.I., I met a man and just as we started to move forward, I was sent off on a two month mission. When I came back he was gone and when my apartment building burnt down I felt that there was nothing left for me there. So I returned here with the hopes that my little wildcat could help me get my life back on track again." I felt that I had told them enough so I emptied my beer and relaxed back against the couch.

"What are your plans then Gorgeous? What do you want to do?" Santos asked me while popping open a third beer, handing it to me before opening one of his own.

"I want to keep working with security, I can´t imagine doing something else. Other than that I don´t really know… I need to find someplace to live but I don´t know if I want an apartment or a house. I should go shopping for more clothes and other things, those three bags and my car are the only thing I own right now but I don´t see the purpose of shopping for a lot of stuff when I have nowhere to put it…" It got quiet again but then Ranger said something that shocked me for real.

"Do you want to come and work for Rangeman?" He was completely serious but what had shocked me the most was the microscopic smile that was barely visible on his lips, it made me think he would be happy to have me working for him but that couldn´t be true, could it?

"Why would you offer me that? You know of me true, but you don´t know me. And I don´t do pity." I told him seriously with Santos and Stephanie listening to every word spoken, curious about how this would turn out. Would I accept the Rangeman job offer or go my own way?

"It´s true that I don´t know you personally but my Babe does. Babe, don´t you think hiring Kat would be a wise investment for Rangeman?" I saw Steph´s eyes widen in happiness and immediately realized that she would love for me to work for Rangeman too.

"Absolutely! She would fit right in with the guys and we could really benefit from her knowledge, she has a few skills I know she likes to keep a secret but they are really good skills to have. She´s like a Victory Knox pocket knife, she has many uses." I could have taken that last part as an insult had I not known Stephanie the way I did, as it was, I only found it humorous.

"See, it´s not out of pity. It really is a good investment, I need to hire more staff and business is booming, we´re starting to have trouble keeping up with the workload. Unfortunately it´s hard to find people who would fit in with us, and not only because not very many passes the admissions test." Ranger said and I raised one eyebrow at him.

"And you think I will fit in and pass the test?" He locked his intense gaze with mine and said truthfully.

"Yeah, I think you will." That rendered me silent, not only did he believe I would fit in with his friends and chosen family, he also thought I would be able to pass his admissions test. I wanted to turn down the job offer simply because it seemed too good to be true, I had never been handed anything in life and I had always been forced to fight for what I wanted. Why would it be different this time? But because he held such faith in me, because he believed in me, I had to accept it.

"Fine, I´ll give it a shot. When do you want me to take the test?" I asked him but before he could answer I had a squealing Steph in my lap that was practically bouncing with excitement. I was slightly worried she was going to make me deaf but she soon quieted down so that I could hear Ranger´s answer.

"Whenever you´re able to, I can´t hire you until you take it though. But if you want to, you can come in with Babe and get to know the guys a little better beforehand if you want to." Ranger answered before asking if I have any questions to which I nodded yes.

"What does the test entail? Are there any requirements placed on me?"

"In the test you have to run a certain distance within a certain time limit, the same with push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups, show that you can take down, subdue and defend yourself from an enemy. We also test marksmanship and defensive driving. After you´re hired you´re required to be armed when at work, work out at least five hours a week and spend at least three hours a week in the shooting range." It would depend a little on how hard the different parts of the test would be but I thought I would be able to pass it; there was nothing on it that was new to me. As for the requirements of me after being hired, I wouldn´t even have to think about it. I was always armed, no matter where I was and three hours in the gun range per week would be no trouble. And come on, five hours a week in the gym? I usually spent 15 hours a week in the gym…

"Are you sure I only have to spend 5 hours a week in the gym? Not more? That´s a lot less than I usually do…" I couldn´t help but tell him and he raised one eyebrow in surprise.

"Really how much do you usually train during one week then? 10 hours?" He asked and I blushed a little and admitted quietly.

"No, 15 hours... I run for one hour and then work with weights for thirty minutes before swimming for another hour. God I´ll miss the pool in my old building…"

"There´s no need for you to miss your old pool Gorgeous; we have one on the third floor next to the gym. The other navy guys that work at Rangeman were bitching about missing the water so we renovated a little and voila, a pool!" Santos told me with a smile. I was just about to ask him more about the pool when Steph yawned big enough that I was worried she would dislocate her own jaw.

"Sorry guys, it´s been a long day…" She excused herself and Ranger and Santos exchanged a look before Ranger spoke.

"Don´t worry about it Babe, Santos and I need to get going as well. Why don´t you and Kat have lunch with me tomorrow on seven, we can talk more then. And Kat, I give you my word that Bobby will behave himself should you meet him, he realized that he had done something wrong, he just needs a little help figuring out what." I nodded and Steph promised him that we would meet him for lunch. We then followed them to the door and wished them goodnight, they stayed in the hallway until they heard Steph engage all of her locks. When the two of us were alone she yawned again and asked me.

"Will you be alright if I go to bed? It really has been a long day… Do you want some Tylenol so you can sleep without pain? Because you can´t tell me that it doesn´t hurt…"

"Yeah, I´ll probably go to sleep soon too. If you have some I wouldn´t refuse it, I can manage without but I would sleep better and easier with it." I answered her and followed her to the kitchen where she showed me where she kept her medicines and stuff like that. Because of the lack of space in her bathroom she kept her first aid stuff in the kitchen.

While Steph did her bedtime routine in the bathroom I swallowed the painkillers with some water and then checked the window in her bedroom just to be sure there wasn´t any unpleasant surprises waiting for us. Everything was fine so when Steph closed herself inside her bedroom I did my routine in the bathroom and lied down on the couch to get some sleep as well.

* * *

_**Dream sequence**_

_It was unbearably hot and bugs were buzzing in the afternoon heat. The jungle was thick around me and I was completely alone._

_"You failed me Dragon." A voice spoke and I spun around only to see that there was no one there._

_"You let me die." The voice said again, once again behind me and this time when I spun around, I was no longer alone. A man stood before me, standing at 6 feet three inches, with dirty blonde hair and grey eyes but something was very wrong. His body was decaying, rotting, as if he was dead and had been left in the inhuman heat of the jungle for a few days._

_I took a step back, and then another one and another one until I turned around and ran. I had been in battles where my life was on the line but that was nothing against the fear I felt, facing the decomposing man. Because I knew that he spoke the truth, and that frightened me the most._

_I stumbled and fell face forward on the moist ground and when I turned around to lay on my back I saw that I was still in the same spot where I had started, and that the decomposing man was leaning over me._

_"I will never forgive you Dragon, you left me here and my death is on you." And then he pushed his hand into my thorax and ripped out my heart._

_**End Dream sequence**_

* * *

I sat up with a gasp and barely held back the scream that wanted to tear itself from my throat. I was covered in a cold sweat and was gasping for breath, that nightmare always did that to me. It wasn´t the only nightmare haunting me, but it was one of the worst.

I knew there would be no more sleep for me tonight, so I made myself some coffee and clicked on the TV, keeping the volume down as to not wake Steph up, and braced myself for waiting out the remainder of the night.

* * *

Let me know what you think please? I live for your rewievs!

Love C


	5. Meeting Hector

I only own Kat and the storyline, the rest belongs to Janet Evanovich

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**AN:** All spanish parts comes from google translate.

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**DRAGON**

_Chapter Five - Meeting Hector_

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When Stephanie came out from her bedroom the next morning, I was sitting in a lotus-position in the middle of her living room floor, meditating to try and get myself back together. I was still feeling on edge from the nightmare and meditating had helped before.

"Should I expect to find you like this every morning?" She asked me sleepily while starting the coffee maker.

"Not every morning, I do it if I for some reason can´t sleep. That way my body and mind still gets some of the rest it needs." I answered her before getting up so that I could get dressed for the day. I decided on a pair of green cameo cargo pants and a deep red tank top. I geared up and then went back to the kitchen were a nice steaming cup of coffee were waiting for me.

"What are our plans for today?" I asked Steph as she was slowly munching on a pop tart. I refused to eat that kind of stuff so early in the morning so instead I made myself some toast.

"I have to be at Rangeman in time for the morning meeting, then I have to go and meet with Connie and Lula in our office and if there´s time left I´m hoping to catch a skip or two before we have lunch with Ranger. Wanna come with me?"

"Sure I´ll come, I´m curious to meet Connie and Lula. I might not be able to come with you while chasing skips though, I can´t really see much with my right eye and my whole face hurts." I told her and saw her eyes turned worried for a second before she was smiling again and said.

"That´s okay Kat, you don´t have to come with me everywhere you know. I´ll get one of the other guys to come with me if there´s someone I need help with." She promised and went to collect her bag before we left her apartment.

When we reached the Rangeman SUV down in the parking lot Stephanie froze and grabbed my arm to stop me as well.

"Is something wrong Steph?" I asked her while scanning the parking lot for any potential dangers.

"I don´t know… My spidey sense is tingling, I don´t think we should take the SUV…" I nodded, trusting her instincts in this matter and led her to my car instead and asking her.

"What does your spidey sense tell you about my car then? Does it feel dangerous too?" She shook her head no.

"No, your car feels fine. Let´s go; I need to tell Ranger about this so he can send out a team to check it out." She said and I unlocked the car, we got in and left the parking lot without any incidents. When we pulled into the Rangeman garage both Ranger and Santos came down to meet us and as soon as we got out of the car, Ranger asked.

"Is there something wrong with the SUV?" Steph nodded and told him.

"My spidey sense was tingling; you need to send out Hector and Zero out to check it over." I almost felt my ears perking up when I heard a name that was very familiar.

"Zero? Was he a Seal? Does he have a blue dragon tattooed on the inside of his left wrist?" I asked them, telling myself that the chances that it was my Zero was practically nonexistent but couldn´t stop myself from hoping that it was him anyway.

"Yeah that´s our Zero, you know him Gorgeous?" Santos asked me and I felt my entire face lit up in a smile.

"Know him? Oh I know him, I was his commanding officer. Do you have any more ex-Seals that I might´ve worked with working here?" I just had to ask that, most of my team had gotten out of the navy years before me so it wasn´t impossible that there was more of them working here.

"The other ex-Seals are Cal, Hal, Ram and Manny; do you know any of them?" Santos asked and I answered.

"I know of Cal, Hal and Ram, I never worked with them though. Manny was with me for a little while though, but he left to study to be a forensic if I´m not mistaken."

"You´re not, he did study forensics before coming to work here." Ranger said before turning to Santos and asking.

"Is Zero back from New York yet? I can´t send Hector out alone to check out the car without someone who has knowledge about explosives." Santos shook his head no and said.

"No, he´s not due back until later tonight." They both became silent as they pondered the problem presented to them but I said.

"How about I go with this Hector guy then? I worked with Zero long enough to pick up a thing or two about explosives." I kept my eyes locked with Rangers as he thought about my suggestion carefully before responding.

"Fine, just be careful. I don´t want you injured when you´re not even hired yet." He told me and I promised him that I´d be careful. They told me that they would send down Hector to me and that I could use Zero´s tools since they were already loaded into the SUV that he and Hector always used when they got called out on stuff like this. Apparently they were used to working together but they were not partners, Hector didn´t have a full time partner and instead worked with whoever had the skills needed to compliment his depending on what the task was.

I had no idea what kind of person Hector was, but I sure as hell didn´t expect him to be what he was. When he joined me in the garage and walked over to me I didn´t know where to look first. He was taller than me, but not by much, a little over 6 feet maybe. He had dark hair that was cropped closely to his head and dark eyes that reminded me of melted chocolate. He was definitely more lean than buff but I had a feeling that he had a lot of strength anyway. But the most eye catching had to be the tattoos… He had several that were displayed proudly on his skin but my eyes went directly to the two tear drop tattoos that were etched into his skin beneath his left eye.

"Hello, are you Hector?" I asked him when he was close enough to hear me.

_"Sí, lo soy, ¿Hablas español?"_ (Yes I am, do you speak Spanish?) He answered me.

_"Que hago. ¿Vamos a seguir adelante?"_ (I do. Shall we get going?) He looked pleasantly surprised to find out that I did in fact speak Spanish and nodded before unlocking one of the SUV´s for us. The ride back to Steph´s parking lot passed in silence and I used the time to mentally go over what I might find in the SUV and how to take care of the different scenarios. I saw Hector glance at my abused face several times from the corner of his eye so I thought I would give him an explanation.

_"Morelli se presentó en el apartamento Steph's ayer, él le gritaba a ella cuando llegué allí y cuando estaba a punto de golpearla me apretó la pistola contra su cabeza. Él dejase't apreciar que lo que él me golpeó en la cara con un recipiente de vidrio. Le permití hacer eso para que yo pudiera presentar cargos contra él."_ (Morelli showed up at Steph´s apartment yesterday, he was yelling at her when I got there and when he was about to hit her I pressed my gun against his head. He didn´t appreciate that so he hit me in the face with a glass bowl. I allowed him to do that so that I could press charges against him.)

_"Eso es valiente y amable de su parte. Gracias por proteger a mi pequeño ángel usted."_ (That´s both brave and kind of you. Thank you for protecting my little Angel.)

_"De nada. Pero lo habría hecho de que no importa qué, nadie pone la mano en mi gato montés."_ (You're welcome. But I would have done that no matter what; no one lays a hand on my wildcat.)

_"Gato montés?"_ (Wildcat?)

_"Sí ella es mi gato montés. ES un apodo de cuando íbamos a la escuela. Los tres de nosotros tenía apodos, Stephanie, Mary-Lou y yo Steph fue nombrado gato montés, Mary-Lou fue nombrado serenidad y fue nombrado dragón. Dragón era también mi nombre en el ejército."_ (Yes she is my wildcat. It´s a nickname from when we went to school. All three of us had nicknames, Stephanie, Mary-Lou and I. Steph was named wildcat, Mary-Lou was named serenity and I was named Dragon. Dragon was also my name in the military.) I told him and then scanned the parking lot as we reached it and parked far away from the other SUV.

We got out of the car and grabbed our gear before carefully closing in on the potentially dangerous SUV. We didn´t speak much as we went over the car, searching for anything that might prove to be hazardous. It wasn´t hard to find the explosives that were connected to the starter. It was designed to go off as soon as the key was turned in the ignition, had not Steph´s spidey sense warned us we would have been dead for sure. The explosive was a small one but very potent.

_"¿Qué hacemos con la bomba? Sigue siendo peligroso a pesar de estar desarmado."_ (What do we do with the bomb? It's still dangerous despite being disarmed.) I asked Hector, holding the small device in my hands.

_"Echemos un vistazo de la ciudad, no conozco un lugar donde podemos detonar de forma segura."_ (Let´s take it out of the city, I know of a place where we can detonate it safely.) Hector answered and we piled back into our SUV, the bomb still carefully held in my hands. I knew it wouldn´t go boom without some kind of trigger, but it would be in my best interest to not drop it during the car ride to our destination.

The drive was made in silence; Hector was focused on his driving and I was concentrating to keep my hands steady. Hector took me outside the city, to an old and abandoned quarry where we would be able to detonate the bomb safely. Hector got out from the car and took the bomb from my hands to put it on the ground a safe distance from us. He returned quickly and we stood on the other side of the car, placing the front of the car between us and the bomb before I pulled one of my guns and shot the bomb, making it explode.

It was a powerful explosion but it was small enough that we really didn´t need the shelter of the car, the distance itself was enough to protect us. We picked up what was left of the bomb, put it in the car and started the drive back into Trenton. I called Steph to let her know what had happened.

**"Steph talking." **She answered and I could hear the faint tapping on a keyboard, making me think that she was doing some deskwork on her computer.

"Hi Steph it´s Kat. I´m just calling to let you know that there was a bomb connected to the starter of your car. We disabled it so the car is good to go again though Ranger might want to have it checked over once more just to be sure. We´re on our way back now."

**"Oh damn it who wants me dead this time? I´ll let Ranger know about the car, how are things going with Hector?"**

"I don´t know but we have to be careful… I don´t want anything happen to you wildcat. It´s fine, I like him and it feels good to practice my Spanish again." I answered honestly.

**"I´m always trying to be careful… I know that you speak Spanish but I´ll let you in on a little secret of mine, Hector speaks English perfectly well, he just prefers to speak Spanish. Something about getting a lot of information when people think that you can´t understand them…"**

"Well I´ll be damned, I have to admit that I didn´t see that one coming even if I´m not really surprised. Being able to gather information was after all one of the reasons I learned so many languages, not to mention how funny it can be to listen to people talk when they don´t know they are being listened to." I replied while shooting Hector a glance and a smirk. He noticed and smirked back, a humorous gleam in his eyes telling me that he knew that I knew his little secret. He must´ve had so much fun listening to me speaking Spanish, I could only hope that I hadn´t embarrassed myself; I actually liked this guy and was hoping that we could work together again. Sure he was a bit intimidating but I felt safe with him, instinctively knowing that he wouldn´t hurt me.

**"Yeah he´s a little special but I love him like a brother… I have to go though; Ranger just came back from a meeting. Talk to you later."**

"Sure thing, Bye." I told her and ended the call, turning a little in my seat so that I was able to face a grinning Hector.

_"Stephanie me dijo que usted habla perfecto Inglés, ¿no quieres que sepa o no que simplemente no decir nada al respecto porque no tenía problemas para hablar español?"_ (Stephanie told me that you speak perfect English, did you not want me to know or did you just not say anything about it because I had no trouble speaking Spanish?) I asked him, smiling to let him know that I wasn´t angry.

_"No me importa que usted lo sepa mi pequeño secreto, la forma en que respondió a Stephanie diciendo que me hace pensar que usted entiende por qué lo hago. I'd apreciar si no te dices a nadie fuera de RANGEMAN embargo. Por favor?"_ (I don´t mind you knowing my little secret, the way you responded to Stephanie telling you makes me think that you understand why I do it. I´d appreciate if you don´t tell anyone outside of Rangeman though. Please?) He asked me and gave me the puppy eyes.

"Of course I won´t tell anyone if you ask me not to, I wouldn´t do that to a comrade." I told him in English this time.

"You consider me a camarada? A comrade?" He asked me surprised and I told him.

"Of course I do, we work together right now and hopefully we will again in the future if I pass the admissions test. I´d like to be your friend as well but it´s a little early for that don´t you think? We have to at least share a cup of coffee first." I told him with a mischievous smile, hoping that he could read between the lines. He lit up in a bright smile before pulling into an empty parking space outside a Starbucks.

"What kind of coffee would you like mi dragón adorable?" He asked me and my eyes widened a little at my new nickname.

"Did you just call me adorable dragon?" I asked him, I had to know if I had heard him correctly or if my ears were tricking me.

"Sí, I did. Do you not like it?" He asked me, worry taking over his eyes. It appeared that I had made a new friend simply by considering him a comrade and a friend.

"No I love it; it just surprised me a little. I don´t know if I have ever been called adorable… But I will only accept that name from you; no one else can call me that." I told him seriously.

"I promise you that. Les prometo que. Now what kind of coffee do you want?"

"Thank you. Gracias. I´ll have whatever you´re having." He nodded.

"Very well, I´ll be right back mi dragón adorable." I smiled as he entered the building and escaped from sight, I had another name to put on my list of new friends. Seems like coming back to Trenton might work out fine in the end in all cases.

I could see that there were a lot of people in the shop, so I knew that he would be gone for a little while. I got out of the car and leaned against the passenger door to wait for him and about five minutes passed before I saw someone I recognize walking towards me.

One Joe Morelli was stalking towards me with a furious expression and I looked behind him to see his personal car parked at the curb with the driver´s door still open. He must´ve driven by when he saw me and judging by the expression on his face, he was about to do something stupid.

He stopped when he was a few feet away from me and told me in a voice that let me know that he was close to breaking. I already knew that he didn´t handle Steph leaving him in a good way and I also knew that by filing my assault charges he most likely had lost his job. I had a sneaking suspicion that he was going to blame me for everything that hadn´t gone the way he wanted it to.

I held my hands over my guns to be prepared if he did something really stupid like pulling a gun on me but otherwise I didn´t do anything.

"What do you want Morelli? Didn´t you understand when I filed the assault charges against you that I want nothing to do with you? That when Steph filed charges for trespassing and threat against her person, she had no intention to ever be with you again? You have to accept that you´ve lost her." I tried to reason with him in the hopes that I could make him go back to his car and leave all of us alone. I knew that while he might have destroyed his future in this town, there were other places he could go and with his mind where it was right now, he leaving town would be a good thing.

"You destroyed my life, because of you Cupcake won´t take me back, because of you I lost my job, because of you I might get jail-time since you couldn´t keep your nose out of my business. You destroyed my life so I´m going to destroy yours." He told me and a second later he pulled his gun on me and fired it.

I have to give it to him, he was faster with the gun than I had expected. As soon as I realized what he planned to do I threw myself to the side and tucked my limbs in so that I could roll, bullets chasing me and lodging themselves in the ground. When I came out of my roll I dodged to the side, placing the SUV between me and Morelli. Morelli had lost it completely; he was emptying all his bullets in the side of the car now that I had managed to get out of his sight. He wasn´t even realizing that he could simply walk around the car instead of trying to shoot straight thru it.

Glass rained down on me as the windows were shot out and I put my arms up to protect my head. That´s when I noticed that I was bleeding from my arm and I realized that one of the bullets must´ve hit me. It didn´t hurt but that was probably because of all the adrenaline that was running through my system.

Suddenly I heard someone yell in Spanish and I realized that it must be Hector coming to see what all the commotion was. I heard a thud and then Morelli went silent but I stayed in my crouched position behind the car just in case.

"Dragón? Kat? Are you okay?" Hector called out to me and I knew then that the thud I had heard was him knocking Morelli out, guess I could add attempted murder to his list of charges.

"I´m fine Hector!" I yelled back but didn´t move just yet, instead I looked myself over, trying to determine if I had to go to the hospital or not. The bullet had just grazed my left arm so I decided that the hospital was unnecessary, I could just clean it and put on some bandage or something later. I guess Hector thought I was too slow with showing myself because he came walking around the car, worry visible in his eyes. His gaze immediately locked onto my bleeding arm and he kneeled in front of me, gently taking my injured arm in his hands.

"Look at what that bastardo did to you… If there wasn´t so many people here I would kill him." He more or less growled out the last part of the sentence and I placed my free hand on top of one of his to calm him down and told him.

"While I appreciate that you are willing to kill for me, I don´t want that. I don´t want you to sacrifice another piece of you for me when I am so very broken myself." I told him gently and wiped my thumb over his tear drop tattoos. I knew he was curious as to what I meant when I told him that I was broken, but now wasn´t the time for that discussion and he realized that to. Instead he wrapped my arm with a piece of his shirt and asked me.

"How about I take you to dinner some night this week and you can tell me more about what you just said. You worry me a little mi dragón adorable and I don´t like that."

"I´d like that." I told him and gave him a small smile as the sounds of wailing sirens came closer and closer to our position.

* * *

Please let me know what you think! And don´t hesitate to contact me if there´s something you don´t get or if you simply have questions.

Love C


	6. Another meeting with Bobby

I do not own anything except for Kat and the storyline.

All Spanish parts comes from Google translate

* * *

**DRAGON**

_Chapter Six - Another meeting with Bobby_

* * *

We quickly dealt with the police officers, giving them our statements and watching as they took Morelli away, once again cuffed and unconscious. It was harder to get away from the paramedics, they wanted to take me to the hospital but I refused and since they couldn´t force me, they had me sign a paper that relieved them of responsibility just in case something happened later. I happily signed their paper and watched them leave.

"Come on _Dragón_, let´s get you back to Rangeman." He was clever enough not to mention a visit to Bobby but I knew that was what he meant. He had been on the phone with Ranger while I was talking to the police and arguing with the paramedics and I would be very surprised if Ranger hadn´t informed him about the morning meeting.

"Fine, we´ll have to clean out as much glass as we can first though." I said and opened the door to the car, noticing that the glass was already removed from the seats.

"Already done _mi Dragón adorable_, already done." Hector told me before getting in the car as well and steering us back towards Rangeman.

* * *

When we pulled into the underground parking garage with our shot out vehicle I was leaning back in my seat, trying to relax despite the pain in my arm. It wasn´t worse than I could take it though. It seemed as if half of Rangeman was down in the garage, waiting for us. I could see all of the core team, Stephanie and a lot of other guys, some which I recognized and some which I didn´t. I immediately went on the defensive when I saw Bobby though, and Hector noticed.

"Relax _Dragón_, Bobby will behave." Promised Hector and got out of the car, seconds later my door was ripped open by Stephanie and she launched herself at me. She wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her head in my shoulder, thankfully she was careful of my injured arm and didn´t hurt me.

"I´m so sorry Kat this is all my fault!" I felt my shoulder getting wet and realized that she was crying, I used my good arm to gently stroke her back and told her.

"It is not your fault wildcat, it´s Morelli´s fault. If he hadn´t pinned his misery on me, he most likely would have pinned it on you. And I´d rather be the one he blamed." She looked up from her hiding place and her light blue eyes met my dark blue ones, her eyes were red from crying but she had calmed down a bit. She didn´t show any interest in letting me go though…

"Babe come on, you have to let Kat out of the car. She needs to have her arm checked over and we can´t do that in the car." Ranger told her with a gentle voice, he was standing right outside the open car door, blocking us from view from the others.

"It´s fine." I told him. "I can get out of the car if you just back away a little." He did as I asked but he kept both me and Steph under close watch, he must´ve been afraid we were going to hurt ourselves and wanted to be close enough to interfere if something went wrong. But I did get both me and Steph out of the car without any incidents, she clung to me like a baby koala bear and that made it easier. When I was standing steadily I turned towards Ranger and asked him.

"Where to?"

"Bobby´s office, you really have to get that arm looked at Kat." He told me and I sighed but started walking towards the elevator anyway.

"I can fix it myself you know, I´ll just pour some disinfectant over it and slap on a bandage." I bit out, the pain was getting to me and I still didn´t want Bobby to touch me again, right now I didn´t trust him.

"And what are you going to do about the pain, Gorgeous? Or if it needs stitches?" Santos asked me, making me turn my head to see that he was walking on my other side. I stopped and looked behind me as well, only to see that Tank was taking up the position right behind us. I couldn´t believe these guys, they had formed a protective formation around me and Steph and it was both sweet and a little annoying.

All three of them piled into the elevator with us while the others took the stairs. I turned a little so that I could face Ranger and asked him.

"What´s with everyone waiting in the garage for us? I hope that they are not all going to try and fit inside Bobby´s office as well…"

"It´s a thing we do when something has happened out in the field, we wait in the garage for them to come back. And the others are going back to work now so no, they won´t all try and fit in Bobby´s office even if Bobby would have allowed it, he wouldn´t be able to do his job with half of the guys looking over his shoulder." It was Santos who answered me but I didn´t care, I got my answer anyway.

"You will let Bobby help you, won´t you Kat? We all talked to him during the morning meeting and let him know what he did wrong. He wants to apologize Kat; will you give him another chance?" Steph asked me quietly and I sighed again and asked her.

"You will be upset with me if I don´t let him help, right?" She nodded and I sighed again.

"Alright then, I will give him one more chance." I promised her and only seconds later, the elevator pinged and the doors opened. They all followed me to Bobby´s office and when we got there, Steph let me go, even if it was unwillingly and she asked me.

"Do you want me to come with you?" I smiled at her and said.

"Steph don´t you remember when we were in school and I got hit by a car in the parking lot? You threw up and then you fainted, are you sure that you want to come with me? You don´t have to, I´ll be fine on my own." I reassured her and she agreed to wait for me up on five with the others. Then I took a deep breath and entered through the door´s to Bobby´s office.

He had prepared everything for my arrival and stood awkwardly to the side, waiting for me when I entered. I closed the door behind me but remained standing at the door, the tension in the air was so thick that it could be cut with a knife. I was uncomfortable and my arm was hurting but I was willing to give him another chance, he had been wrong to react the way he did but I had overreacted as well.

"Where do you want me?" I asked him quietly and kept my eyes on the floor.

"Here on the bed if you don´t mind, I´m going to clean the wound and then decide if it needs stitches or if a good bandage will do." He told me and I lied down on the bed as he had asked me to. The paper crunched underneath me and I shifted until I was somewhat comfortable.

Bobby took a seat on a chair and moved everything around so that everything he needed was within reach. He started to undo the knot on the strip of Hectors shirt that was currently stopping my blood from leaking out when he told me quietly.

"I am sorry for yesterday, it was wrong of me to react the way I did. It´s just that… I mostly work with guys and the few females have always been civilians. I´m not saying that it excuses the way I reacted but it do play a part in it. I never meant to make you feel bad about it, that wasn´t my intention. I just… I just wanted to help you, make sure that you were safe…" He admitted and my heart almost broke at how depressed he sounded. I also felt like a royal bitch for lashing out at him the way I did, he didn´t mean any harm and didn´t deserve it.

"I am sorry too Bobby, you didn´t deserve the out lash I gave you… But not being treated like an equal is a problem of mine, I have always had to fight against those prejudices but I just want to feel like I belong…"

"How about we start over then? Forget yesterday happened?" He suggested and gently pulled the strip of fabric that had gotten stuck in the dried blood away. I grimaced and held my breath until he threw the strip of fabric away and started cleaning the wound.

"I´d like that… How does it look? Will it need stitches?" I asked him and watched intently as he cleaned the wound with gentle hands.

"Nah, it´s just a shallow graze. It bleeds quite a lot but a bandage will suffice." He started wrapping my arm but hesitated and asked me.

"Do you mind if I ask how you got the scars on your back?"

"I don´t mind any questions, I just don´t answer those I don´t feel like answering. As for my scars… I can´t tell you, it´s still classified information. But I can tell you that I did get them during my latest mission for the government a few months ago." I told him and he nodded slowly before finishing up with my arm, telling me.

"There, all good to go. Want me to follow you up to fifth? I believe that bomber and the others are waiting for you?" I shook my head no and told him.

"That´s not necessary, I´ll find my way. I don´t want to keep you from your work any longer than I have to."

"Alright then, do you mind coming back here in a few days so I can make sure it´s healing alright?" He asked me and I promised him that before leaving his office and taking the stairs up to the fifth floor. It felt good to have solved the situation with Bobby and I was starting to look forward to work here, with these guys, full time.

When I entered the fifth floor I noticed Santos and Tank standing by the elevator, it looked like they were waiting for someone so I decided not to disturb them and instead approached then man named Cal that I had met yesterday. He was working at a computer in a cubicle and looked really bored.

"Excuse me? Cal was it, right? Can you show me where Rangers office is located please?" he turned around and I couldn´t stop myself from looking at the tattoo on his forehead, it was really well done and my fingers itched to touch it for some reason.

"Yeah I´m Cal… Sure thing kitten, I´ll take you. How´s your arm? Did it need stitches?" He asked me while standing up and gesturing for me to follow him.

"Kitten? Nope, no stitches, it´s just a shallow graze and Bobby gave me something for the pain so I´m fine." I told him and he smiled at me and explained my new nickname.

"Yeah, your name is Kathleen but you go by Kat. Kat sounds like Cat but kitten fits you more than cat. You´re small compared to the rest of us, just like a kitten!" I was smiling as well when he stopped talking and I told him.

"I can live with being called kitten."

"That´s good because I have no plans to stop calling you that. Now here we are the boss man´s office. See you around kitten." He told me before turning around and going back to his cubicle to continue working. I knocked on the door in front of me and when Ranger called out for me to enter, I did.

His office was really cozy, all dark wood and warm earth colors. He was seated in his chair behind the computer on his desk, Steph was in his lap and both of them were looking at the computer screen with smiles on their faces.

"What are you guys doing?" I asked them and Steph gestured for me to come and look as well.

"We are waiting to see how long it takes for Tank and Santos to realize that you took the stairs instead of the elevator." She told me and giggled. I watched them on the screen for a little while longer before I got bored and took a seat on the couch that was pushed up against one of the walls instead.

5 minutes became 10 and ten minutes became 20 and Santos and Tank were still waiting at the elevator for me. I was starting to question their intelligence when Ranger´s phone rang. He gestured for me to be quiet and put the call on speaker.

"Report." He greeted and I bit my lip to keep from laughing.

"Still no signs of Kat Ranger, do we wait here or do we go down to Bobby and look for her?" Tank asked seriously and even Ranger had to fight a smile as he told them.

"You wait there, I´ll send Babe down to Bobby." And with that he hung up on them and Stephanie and I burst out laughing. Ranger chuckled a little and turned to Steph, telling her.

"Go down to Bobby and fill him in on the situation, then call Santos and Tank down to third so that Kat and I can escape to seven. You can join us when you get tired of playing with them." She lit up in a huge smile and quickly left the office.

"Do you often torture your employees like this?" I asked Ranger with a smile and he answered.

"Only when they don´t notice someone coming onto the floor by the stairs. I told them to wait for you so that you would know where to go; I never told them that they should only have attention on the elevator. I trust Cal was willing to help?" I chuckled a little and spoke.

"Yeah Cal helped me. I get the feeling they are expecting me to be like Steph and while I am like Steph in some areas, I am my own person."

"Yeah they´ll figure that out soon enough." Ranger agreed and we watched as Santos and Tank got a call from Steph and then quickly made their way down to the third floor.

"Come on Kat, let´s go up to seven while they are away." He told me and I simply nodded in agreement and followed him to the elevator. During the ride up the two of us were silent and when we entered his private apartment I was overwhelmed by all the luxury.

The apartment had the same dark wood and warm earth colors as his office and I instantly relaxed at the calm the apartment held. Something absolutely mouthwatering was waiting for us in the dining room but neither of us had the slightest thought of going there before Stephanie arrived. Instead we seated ourselves on the plush couch in his living room and he asked me.

"How does your arm feel? I had planned on letting you take the admissions test this Friday but perhaps we should wait until you´re completely healed…" I immediately shook my head no.

"My arm´s fine. It´s just a shallow graze, it bled and hurts a little but there will be nothing stopping me from taking the test this Friday. I want it done, I´m actually excited about getting to work here and I want to start as soon as possible." I told him and prepared myself for an argument that never came.

"Okay then, but if you feel that your arm´s going to be a problem, let me know and we´ll push back the test." I nodded, I could agree with that logic. We talked a little about how it had gone with Hector this morning and I told him that I would love to work with him again. That statement made Ranger seem surprised and I curiously asked him why.

"Most of my men, while fully capable of working with each other, most of them avoid working with Hector if possible. The exception to that seems to be Zero, Babe and now you. I believe the others are frightened of him, he might not have been in the military but he is more deadly and lethal than most of the men working here." Ranger told me but I only smiled.

"Their loss then." Before Ranger could respond to that the apartment door opened and I heard three pairs of feet enter. Stephanie found us first and quickly pulled me up from the couch and through another door only seconds before Santos and Tank entered the room to confess to Ranger that they had lost me. I briefly noticed that I was in Rangers bedroom before I concentrated on what was being said in the other room.

"Why isn´t Kat with you?" Ranger asked them with a voice as hard and unforgiving as diamonds.

"Sorry Rangeman, she wasn´t with Bobby, she hasn´t left the building and she isn´t on the fifth floor. We have no idea where she went." Tank admitted and I could tell that he absolutely detested that he had failed his mission. Both men held worry in their eyes and when I told Stephanie so she whispered back.

"Well of course they worry Kat, they care about you." Then she went quiet so that she could hear what Ranger would tell them.

"It´s lucky I know where she is then." Ranger said and stood from the couch. "Babe you can come out now." He called to Stephanie and she opened the door and reentered the room with a steady grip around my wrist, pulling me with her.

"Hi guys." I told them as they looked at me with surprise. It took them almost a whole minute to collect themselves before Santos found his mouth and asked Ranger.

"How?" Ranger only chuckled before explaining it to them.

"While you two watched the elevator, she took the stairs to the fifth floor when she was done with Bobby. She saw you two and didn´t want to disturb you since you seemed to be waiting for someone so she asked Cal to show her to my office which he did. When Babe called you down to the third floor Kat and I rode the elevator up here." They were silent for a few seconds before Santos burst out laughing, the rest of us following. When Santos and Tank had stopped laughing and been reassured that there was nothing wrong with me, they left and Steph, Ranger and I could finally go and have a taste of the food that was doing its best to drive me crazy with the mouthwatering smell.

As soon as Stephanie and I tasted the food on our tongues, she let out a moan while I only sighed contently. The food disappeared fast and when all of it was gone I had to agree with them, Ella´s food was the best.


	7. Admissions test and an explosion

I do not own anything except for Kat and the storyline.

* * *

**DRAGON**

_Chapter Seven - Admissions test and an explosion_

* * *

The rest of the week passed really fast, nothing more happened to Stephanie or I and I was quickly making myself at home at Rangeman with the guys. My arm was healing nicely and there was nothing stopping me from taking the admissions test this Friday.

I was sitting with Stephanie on her couch the night before the test; we had picked up some food from Pino´s and were watching 'Ghostbusters', her favorite movie. Since both of us had seen the movie plenty of times before we were talking while watching it.

"Are you nervous about the test tomorrow?" Steph asked me and I shook my head no and said.

"Not really, I believe I can pass the test and even if I don´t it doesn´t help being nervous about it."

"Sometimes I wish I was more like you…" Stephanie admitted. "I mean, I´m not even the one taking the test and I´m still nervous."

"You´re good enough as you are Steph. Don´t let anyone tell you otherwise. You have great instincts, an amazing huge heart and luck enough to last you both two and three lifetimes." I told her seriously and then we finished the movie in silence.

* * *

The next morning was soon upon us but I was still as calm as I was the night before, Stephanie was the nervous one. We took my car to Rangeman and the core team met us down in the garage. They were the ones that were going to do my testing; Stephanie was spending the day with Cal, the two of them running Rangeman for the day.

Ranger, Tank, Santos, Bobby and I went up to the gym to start on the physical parts of the test. Bobby was supervising the first part; I had to run on a treadmill for twenty minutes and manage at least 2.5 miles, I had to do 50 reps of pushups and sit-ups and I had to do 20 reps of pull-ups.

I started out on the treadmill and simply let my mind wander as I tried to run as fast as possible but without losing my energy with five minutes of running left. When Bobby´s timer went off I was gasping for breath, sweating like a pig and on the verge of throwing up my breakfast, but I had run almost exactly three miles in twenty minutes so the first part of the test was cleared.

I was allowed five minutes of rest before we moved on to the pushups and sit-ups and pull-ups. I did my best to ignore the pain in my muscles and didn´t even bother to count the reps, Bobby would tell me when I was finished. I did all of the required reps but the last few of every style was hard and I struggled a little, I never did that many reps in one go when training. But I passed that part as well and then it was Santos turn to boss me around.

The fighting and self-defense part was next but I did get a ten minute break because Bobby wanted to check my arm and the rest of me over just to make sure I hadn´t injured myself while doing the reps. But when my ten minutes were up my muscles still felt like jello but I went onto the mats anyway, I was not going to let that stop me.

At first I was told to simply defend myself from Santos as he attacked me, I did that without any problems so we soon switched to me attacking him. I had a much harder time doing that but I refused to give up and when Santos stopped me I hoped that I had passed his test as well.

"Good work Gorgeous, I´m impressed." Santos told me with a big smile and I smiled back from my collapsed position on the mat. I was sprawled out on my back and didn´t knew if I had the energy to get up on my feet anymore today. But I was stubborn and forced myself to my feet again, I wanted a shower and some food and then I would be good to go again. Bobby, Tank and Santos left the gym and Ranger gestured for me to follow him.

"Come on Kat, you can have a shower up on seven and then we´ll have lunch before continuing with the marksmanship and defensive driving." He told me. We took the elevator up and Ranger showed me to his bathroom before leaving me alone to go and call Ella and Stephanie.

I had clean clothes in my backpack so I quickly stripped off the gym clothes and stepped underneath the warm water of the shower. His shower was absolutely divine and I felt like I could stand in there for hours. But after only ten minutes in the warm heaven I washed my hair and my body, borrowing Ranger´s shower gel, something named Bulgari Green… Before I turned the water off and wrapped myself in one of Ranger´s big, fluffy towels.

I quickly dried myself off and dressed in black, lacy underwear, black cargo pants and a black tank top. I then put the towel away and exited the bathroom feeling almost like a female version of Ranger. I found Steph and Ranger in the kitchen, Ella had delivered some food and they had just set the table for us. I quickly sat down and didn´t bother with small talk since I was starving and stressed so that I wouldn´t be late for the next part of the test. Instead I listened to Stephanie and Ranger talk about the bomb Hector and I found in her car, apparently they didn´t have a clue as to whom might have placed it there.

"You sure it isn´t one of your skips?" I asked her and she shook her head no.

"It´s not likely, those that might want me dead are still in prison or already dead."

"Then what about their families? Maybe someone is real upset because their brother or sister or whatever was put in jail?" Stephanie disappeared into thought as I gave her mind another angle to work with and Ranger said.

"That might be the case… I´ll have to run some searches. Find out which skips have family members with some knowledge of explosives." I finished the food on my plate and stood up.

"Yeah, can we finish my test before that? Stephanie is way more nervous about it than I am but that doesn´t mean that I don´t want it to be over and done with." He nodded his agreement and stood up as well, he whispered a few words in Stephanie's ear and she nodded distantly and continued to stare at the air in front of her.

Ranger chuckled at her antics and gestured for me to follow him. We took the elevator down to the basement where the shooting range was located for the third part of my test, marksmanship.

The other three core team members met us there and they explained to me that I had to hit the paper men in certain areas and from a certain distance to be able to pass this part of the test. I wasn´t nervous, I was comfortable with my guns and very proficient in handling them.

The marksmanship part was a breeze and took just a little over an hour. For the last part of the test we gathered in the garage and Tank walked up to an SUV and told me.

"For the defensive driving we´re going to drive around the city, I want to see that you can drive defensively in regular traffic meaning you won´t allow yourself to be boxed in. We´re also going to have Santos and Ranger driving around and I want you to discover if they start tailing you and if they do, that you know how to lose them. I´m also going to point out a car or two for you to tail, you understand little one?"

"I sure do, big guy. Now come on, let´s get this over with." We drove around for about two hours before Tank told me to go back to Rangeman. I believed that I had done well but I wasn´t entirely sure and that made me nervous. I really, really wanted to work with these guys. I parked the car and then Santos and Ranger parked on either side of me, then we all got out and I leaned against the car, waiting for their verdict.

"So want to know how you did Gorgeous?" Santos asked me teasingly and I glared at him. Of course I wanted to know, I wasn´t going to let him know just how badly though.

"Play nice now cousin, you don´t want your new partner mad at you don´t you?" Ranger told him with a tiny, crooked smile. I felt joy fill me as I realized that he had said that I was Santos new partner, which meant I had passed the test! Then I remembered that Santos was already partnered up with Bobby and I asked them.

"Wait a second what about Bobby then? Isn´t he Santos partner?" I asked, confused and Bobby explained.

"Yeah I am but with every new hire we get, I get more work in the medic bay. I simply don´t have enough time to be both the Rangeman medic and Santos full-time partner. So we thought that you and I could share Santos, allowing both of us out in the field and never leaving Santos without a partner."

"And when Bobby and Santos are working together, I´m thinking about letting you partner up with Hector." Ranger added and I couldn´t stop a smile from entering my lips. I would get to work with Hector again, at least part time. I nodded and said.

"Sounds alright to me, when do I get to start?"

"Monday."

* * *

A few hours later Stephanie and I were driving back to her apartment, she was talking nonstop about how great it was that I was now a fulltime Rangeman employee. We reached her building and I turned into the parking lot and turned off my car. Steph had gone quiet and was watching the windows to her apartment intently.

"Something wrong?" I asked her and immediately started scanning the parking lot for hidden dangers.

"I didn´t leave the lights on…" I looked as well and noticed that the lights were indeed on in her apartment. I grabbed a spare gun from underneath my seat and handed it to Steph, telling her.

"Stay here, lock the doors and call Rangeman. The gun is fully loaded. I´m going to check it out." I told her and then left the car before she could protest. I waited until I heard the locks engage and then I quickly made my way inside the building. I took the stairs to the second floor and slowly approached the closed door. I picked the lock and then carefully opened the door, wary of eventual explosives. But the door was fine and I entered the apartment with my guns drawn and adrenaline pumping through my system.

I slowly crept through the rooms until I entered the bedroom; there I stopped for a second, completely stunned with what I saw. On the bed was a small box with a timer on it that was counting down with only five seconds left before reaching zero. It was another bomb and this one would destroy the apartment and everything and everyone inside it. I had no time so I did the only thing I could do, I ran towards the window and dived through it, glass shards raining down around me before starting the two-story fall that if I was unlucky, would kill me. Then the bomb went off and the apartment was engulfed in flames that burned on my back and lit up the night in an orange-red glow. Then I hit the ground hard and after a moment of pain, everything went dark.

* * *

**Stephanie POV**

I knew something was wrong, very wrong, I just didn´t know what. My spidey sense was screaming at me and my stomach was in knots because Kat was inside the building without backup. I held her spare gun in a death grip and was fumbling with my phone with the other; I needed to call Rangeman, to get her backup.

_"Yo."_

"Ranger! I need backup to my apartment like five minutes ago! Something´s wrong and Kat went in alone and…"

_"Wow calm down Babe we´re on our way, now slow down and tell me what´s happening. Are you in danger?"_

"I… I don´t know… When we turned into the parking lot I noticed that the lights were on in my apartment but they were off when we left this morning. I told Kat and she handed me a spare gun and told me to lock the doors and call you. She went inside to investigate but I have a really bad feeling about this…"

_"So you´re still in Kat´s car?"_ I heard him ask before a massive explosion that made my ears hurt shattered the calm of the evening. Huge fireballs escaped from the windows of my apartment and I immediately understood what had been wrong. There had been a bomb in my apartment, and Kat had been in there on her own.

I heard myself yell at the phone that my apartment had exploded and that I was going to look for Kat, I knew the chances that she was still alive were small but I wouldn´t give up hope until I knew for sure.

I unlocked the doors and hit the pavement running, all of my neighbors were hurrying out of the building but I pushed my way inside and ran up the stairs to my floor. But as soon as I reached the second floor I knew I had to turn back. The fire had spread to the hallway and the heat was close to unbearable, the smoke was thick and black and I started coughing as I returned downstairs and headed outside.

I ran around the building until I was on the small patch of grass below the fire escape and my bedroom window. I was still hoping she had had enough time to escape the inferno that used to be my apartment. There was a lot of debris on the ground on this side and I even believe that I saw a part of my headboard still smoking.

"KAT!" I yelled and heard how sirens quickly came closer, that meant that the car from Rangeman was probably already here and if they found me before I found Kat, they were going to force me away saying that it was too dangerous or something.

I called her name again and when I saw movement from underneath some rubble I rushed over and to my relief I heard coughing before a raspy voice said my name.

"Wildcat?" I felt tears of relief make streaks through the dirt on my cheeks and then I heard Ranger call out our names.

"We´re here!" I yelled back and then turned my concentration back on Kat. She was dirty and a little bloody but at least she was alive.

* * *

**Kat POV**

The first thing I became aware of was pain. My entire body hurt but luckily not enough to indicate that I had broken something; I was probably just bruised… I tried to get up but immediately went into a coughing fit that turned into a pained whine when pain spiked in my shoulder. On a second thought, I might not have broken anything but I sure as hell had dislocated my shoulder, again.

I heard Steph call my name and I made another try to get up but was once again unsuccessful.

"Wildcat?" I rasped out hoping that she was close enough to hear me and help me up. She yelled something that I didn´t hear and then the heavy weight that held me down disappeared and I was able to get into a sitting position.

"Oh my god! Oh my god! Kat! Are you okay? Can you stand?" Stephanie fretted and I took a deep breath before I gritted out from between clenched jaws.

"Dislocated my shoulder again, otherwise I´m fine, I think… Help me up?" She nodded and helped me up with an arm around my good shoulder. I stumbled and she moved so that my good arm was around her shoulders and her arm was around my waist, steadying me.

We started moving back towards the parking lot but hadn´t gotten more than a few steps in the right direction when Ranger, Santos, Tank and Bobby turned the corner and quickly headed for us. Santos shot forward and made a move as if he was going to hug me but I flinched away and Steph stopped him just in time.

"No! No! Don´t touch her! Her shoulder is dislocated." Steph explained and pulled him away from me until they were a few feet away from me. I swayed on my feet and Bobby quickly took Steph´s place at my side, helping me. Steph, Ranger and Santos were walking in front of us, leading the way back to their car and Tank was walking behind us, protecting our backs.

They had parked right next to my car and they quickly opened the back of the SUV so I had somewhere to sit while Bobby worked on me. Ranger and Stephanie disappeared to talk to the police and the firefighters but Santos and Tank took up protective positions on either side of Bobby and me. He shone a light in my eyes and asked me a lot of questions.

"Are you dizzy? Nauseous? Does anything other than your shoulder hurt? How did you get out? What caused the explosion?"

"I´m not dizzy or nauseous and everything hurts, but my shoulder is the worst. Just pop it back will you it´s not the first time I have dislocated it… There was a bomb on Stephanie's bed; it had a timer that was probably triggered when I opened the front door. There was only five seconds left when I found it so I jumped out the window." He halted his movements for a moment to stare at me.

"You jumped out the window and got away with bruises and a dislocated shoulder? Do you have any idea how lucky you are?" I nodded and answered.

"Yeah…" He pulled me back up to a standing position and before I realized what was happening he had popped my shoulder back into place. I bit back a scream and when I felt that I could open my mouth without screaming I started swearing so that even Tank turned to look at me.

Santos gave away a chuckle and I glared at him until he went quiet again. Then Bobby pushed me inside the SUV to sit in the backseat and I allowed him to do that. I was aching and I was tired and without me wanting to, I felt my eyes slid shut and darkness surround me. I was asleep.


	8. Homeless and a friendly dinner

I do not own anything except for Kat and the storyline.

* * *

**DRAGON**

_Chapter Eight – Homeless and a friendly dinner_

* * *

When I woke up I was disoriented and confused, my whole body ached and I smelled like smoke and charred wood. I slowly sat up, carefully studying my surroundings for signs of danger or threats. Then I recognized where I was, I was in Bobby´s medic bay. I looked down on myself and noticed a bandage around my shoulder and the rest of me covered in soot. Then I remembered.

The bomb in Stephanie's apartment, the explosion, falling through the air.

I had dislocated my shoulder again, it was probably the fourth or fifth time I did that. The rest of me was apparently uninjured except for a lot of bruises and some scrapes and I wondered for a moment why I was in Bobby´s medic bay when there hardly was something wrong with me. But then I realized that I was once again homeless.

I had nowhere else to go.

My eyes locked on the door as I heard approaching footsteps and then Bobby entered the room while writing something in a notebook. He put the notebook down on his desk when he noticed that I was awake and asked me.

"How are you feeling Kat? Do you remember what happened?"

"I´m okay… A little aching but okay. Steph and I got back to her apartment but she noticed the lights were on and told me something was wrong. I gave her my spare gun and left her in the car while I entered the building to inspect. Her apartment was empty except for a bomb located in the middle of her bed with a timer counting down. I believe the timer started when I opened the front door despite the fact that I examined the door very closely before opening it. Since I only had five seconds before the bomb would go off I jumped through her bedroom window. I lost consciousness and the next thing I remember is Stephanie calling my name."

"That´s good, that you remember everything clearly means that you don´t have a concussion. As for the rest of you… Your shoulder will be fine but it will be sore for a while, no permanent damage though. Have you dislocated it before? You also have a few scrapes and are more or less covered in bruises but for a fall from the second floor you are remarkably unharmed."

"Yeah I´ve dislocated it before, a few times actually." I told him and sat up on the slightly uncomfortable bed. "Can I leave or do you want to keep me here? What happened to my car?"

"No you´re free to leave but if you suddenly feel worse or if the pain goes up come back and see me. We brought it back with us last night, it´s parked down in the garage. Why? Are you planning on going somewhere?"

"Sure thing doc. No I´m not interested in going anywhere today but I do have a bag with a change of clothes in the car. I really need a shower and some clean clothes… And then I´m going up to five to find something to eat in the break room and then I´m going to find Steph, I need to talk to her."

"Oh okay, I guess I´ll see you later then." Bobby told me with a gentle smile which I returned before I left the room and headed for the garage.

Half an hour later I was fresh out of the shower and dressed in dark grey cargo pants and a teal colored tank top. And I smelled like vanilla and oranges instead of smoke and burning wood. When I entered the fifth floor I was immediately surrounded by what felt like half of Rangeman. They asked me an endless stream of questions, Hector and Cal asking the most but I simply stood there, staring at them. I didn´t understand why they all seemed so worried. Luckily for me Santos came by and saved me by ordering them back to work.

"Are you okay there Gorgeous? You seem a little like a deer in headlights…" He asked me and I turned my eyes up to meet his.

"Yeah I´m fine… I just don´t understand… Why did they all seem so worried about me?" I asked him and tilted my head a little.

"You work with us now and we care about each other, if anything happens during work hours we all know and no matter whom it happened to we all care and worries. It´s a natural response for us to worry about each other." We stopped right outside the break room and I shot him a look.

"How did you know I was headed here?"

"I didn´t but I was, I haven´t had breakfast yet. Care to join me?"

"Sure."

* * *

When Santos had left to go back to work I made my way over to Ranger´s office, hoping that he would be able to tell me where Stephanie was. I knocked on his door and when he told me to enter I found her, she was sitting on the couch in his office with her head in her hands, looking miserable.

"Hey wildcat how are you holding up?" I asked her when she didn´t notice me enter and when she did look at me I could see that her eyes were red-rimmed and tired and fresh tears pooled in her blue eyes.

"I´m a mess Dragon, this is the third time my apartment blows up and I´m sick of it… I can´t do it any longer… constantly being scared of going home because of what I might find there. But I don´t know where else to go… and I promised you a place to stay…" She admitted and I saw the pain in Ranger´s eyes. I knew he had offered her to stay in his apartment with him but clearly she had declined and I was going to find out why.

I gestured to Ranger to leave us alone for a little while and he left with a nod of his head that told me he understood what I was going to try to do. I sat down next to Stephanie and asked her.

"Ranger offered you to stay in his apartment didn´t he? Why didn´t you accept that?"

"Because I´m scared… And I promised you that you could stay with me, that won´t be possible if I´m staying up on seven…" She answered quietly and tiredly rubbed her eyes.

"Don´t worry about me wildcat, I can take care of myself. Why does that scare you? You have stayed with him before have you not?"

"But I promised you! Yeah I have stayed with him before but that has always been temporarily, it was never meant to be permanent…"

"And you kept your promise, I didn´t expect you to house me forever wildcat. I´ll be fine. But why does moving in with Ranger frighten you so much? Is your relationship not going well?"

"Our relationship is fine, I´m not even feeling like running like I did so often with Morelli. But what if I move in and he realizes that he doesn´t want a relationship with me anymore? He used to tell me all the time that his life didn´t lend itself to relationships but what has changed for him to try one with me now?" The tears fell from her eyes and I pulled her close against me in a comforting hug, allowing her to cry on my shoulder. Her previous relationships had really left some mental damage on my little wildcat…

"I´ll talk to Ranger if you want to…" I promised her and I felt her nod weakly against me before she asked.

"You´d do that for me?"

"I´d do anything for you wildcat."

When she calmed down enough to relax her tense muscles, she fell asleep on the couch in Ranger´s office and I left her there to go and find Ranger so that I could talk to him as well.

I found him down in the shooting range, killing off paper men with deadly accuracy. He put his gun away when he noticed me enter though, and looked at me expectantly.

"I need to talk to you… about Stephanie." I told him and saw a hint of worry creep into his eyes before he said.

"Let´s go up to seven then." I simply nodded my agreement and followed him inside the elevator. The worry stayed clear in his eyes and the muscles in his back and neck looked painfully tense so I tried to ease his worry a little.

"Don´t worry Ranger she´s fine, she´s asleep on the couch in your office." He didn´t say anything but his muscles relaxed a tiny bit, showing me that my attempt at comfort had not been for nothing.

He unlocked the door to his apartment and gestured for me to take a seat on the couch in his living room before he did the same and turned his focused gaze on me, waiting for me to start talking.

"Do you know why she declined staying with you this time?" I asked him and he shook his head no.

"No, she has stayed here before when she has been without her apartment or when it has been too dangerous for her to go home. I don´t understand what is different this time…"

"You mean except for that you two are in a relationship this time?" He nodded and I sighed before trying to explain everything.

"Well for starters she felt that she would break her promise to me about giving me a place to stay if she moved in with you, I talked her out of that one though, I´ll be fine on my own. But she is afraid that you´ll no longer want to be in a relationship with her if she moves in with you, she´s afraid that you´ll change your mind. Apparently you have told her that your life doesn´t lend itself to relationships before and she wonders what have changed for you to be able to do that now. She doesn´t know how or what you´re thinking or planning unless you tell her Ranger, I can see that you two are good together but you do have to work on your communication…" He was quiet for a long time and I was getting worried that I had made him angry but then he released a tired sigh and said.

"Damn… I really messed up when I told her that the first time didn´t I?"

"Not if it was true when you said it." I reassured him, I knew very well that our kind of lifestyles usually didn´t lend itself to relationships but things changed.

"It was." He admitted.

"Then what has changed? If you just talked to Stephanie I bet everything would be alright and she would move in with you." I told him sincerely.

"My contract with the army expired and I didn´t resign it… You´re right, I do need to talk more with Stephanie. I´m so used to not be able to tell her anything that I simply continued doing that, and that´s not fair to her…" I smiled at him, he had figured out what he was doing wrong now and I was convinced that he would be able to fix this now. He was so lost in thought that he never noticed me stand up and leave, I was heading back down to five to tell my little wildcat about this and then I was going to find a computer and start looking for apartments.

* * *

I had woken Stephanie up and sent her up to seven without trouble and was now sitting in front of a computer in an empty cubicle on five, looking at available apartments. Or, that was at least what I was trying to do… There were absolutely no apartments available that was of interest to me, they were all too big, too expensive or too far away from here.

I was frustrated to say the least, and I still hadn´t figured out where I would stay tonight, I also needed to go to a mall and buy an emergency wardrobe before the shops closed. I wasn´t much for shopping but I needed more than what I was currently wearing. I also needed to order more of my 'special' equipment online to be delivered to me as soon as possible.

I let out a long sigh and allowed my head to fall down and thump against the keyboard, I just wanted this day to be over with…

"Everything alright kitten? Or do I need to call Bobby?" Asked a voice from behind me and I looked up to see Cal standing next to the desk I was using, looking down on me with a worried frown.

"I´m fine… no need to call Bobby." I told him tiredly and rubbed at my temples to stave off the headache I felt coming.

"Then what have you so troubled? Tell me kitten, I might be able to help." I simply looked at him for a few seconds before realizing that my treacherous mouth was spilling all that was on my mind without me really wanting it to.

"Well for starters there´s absolutely no apartments available that fits me in this entire town, I have to go to a mall or something and buy some clothes before the shops closes for the night. Since Stephanie's apartment blew up the only things I own are my car, the clothes on my back and what I was carrying in my pockets. I also don´t know where I´m going to be staying tonight since Rangeman have no open apartments at the moment." Thankfully I managed to get my mouth to stop talking after admitting all that, I was getting worried all my secrets and worries were going to get out…

"I can´t do much about the apartment problem but if you´ll write a list of what you need I´m sure that Ella would be willing to go and get you what you need. As for where you can stay tonight… you could bunk with me? Or with some of the other guys if you´d be more comfortable with someone else. Then we could move some of the guys around tomorrow to open up an apartment for you." Cal told me.

"Really? It could all be solved just like that? You don´t mind me staying with you tonight then?" I asked him with wide eyes and he only smiled at me and said.

"Yep, no need to make things harder than they have to be, right? And no I don´t mind sharing my living space with you kitten, I wouldn´t have offered if I did."

I saw the logic in his statement and after deciding that he would come and fetch me when he got off from work, he left again and I called Ella to see if she indeed was willing to go shopping for me.

_"Hello?"_

"Hi Ella, it´s Kat. Cal told me that you would be willing to shop for me if i wrote you a list and I just wanted to know if that were true?" I asked her hesitantly and bit down on my lower lip.

_"Of course! You just write that list and I´ll come down and get it in about twenty minutes, that way you can get whatever you need tonight."_

"Oh, okay. Are you sure it´s no problem though? I don´t want to cause you trouble…"

_"It´s no trouble my sweet girl, it´s what I get paid to do. Don´t worry about it, write that list and I´ll be down in a little bit."_

"Okay then, thanks Ella you´re a lifesaver." I told her and then ended the call. I quickly wrote down all the things I needed as well as my sizes for Ella before ordering all my new equipment off the internet. Just as I was shutting the computer off Ella came by and picked up my shopping list and I told her that I was going to spend the night in Cal´s apartment in case the shopping took more time than planned.

I sat back down in the chair and actually felt a little lost about what to do next. I could train of course but with the ache I already felt I wasn´t sure if that was such a good idea, Bobby was more likely to lock me in his med bay then praise my spirit after all. But just when I had convinced myself that a quick swim in the pool couldn´t hurt, a presence came to a stop next to me and a voice I recognized spoke up.

"What are you thinking about **Dragón**? You look rather… troubled." I looked up and met the concerned gaze of Hector´s. He was standing only a few feet away and looked like he was going off his shift.

"I´m at loss about what to do with myself right now… I don´t start working until Monday, I don´t think it´s a good idea to train right now and I don´t even have a place to retreat to… Not that I would have any books to read or movies to watch. But Cal said that I could stay with him tonight and that we would figure out the rest tomorrow… I´m sorry Hector, I´m rambling… I guess I just feel a little sorry for myself right now…" I trailed off and looked up at him with sad eyes and a tired smile, in a way wanting him to help me somehow but at the same time I didn´t want to burden him with my messed up psyche.

"Cal just left, there was a break-in in a residential home on the other side of town, he won´t be back for a few hours at least. Why don´t you text him and tell him that he can come and pick you up from my apartment when he gets back? That way I can finally uphold my promise about dinner and get to know you a little better, we will be part-time partners after all." Hector told me with a gentle smile and held his hand out for me to take. I accepted the offered hand and said.

"Sure, why not?"

* * *

It turned out that Hector too was staying in one of the many apartments on the fourth floor. He unlocked the door for me and told me to feel free to look around while he took a quick shower and changed out of his work clothes. As he showered I slowly wandered around in the small apartment, taking in the wonderful feeling of calmness that washed over me. There were a lot of small gadgets and tiny electrical components spread out over the available surfaces and I made it into a game to see if I could figure out what there were for.

When Hector returned I was holding what I believed was some kind of new gps locator, it was flat and actually looked like it was supposed to be implanted underneath the skin. I followed Hector into the small kitchen and asked him.

"Is this really what I think it is?"

"Only if you believe it is a new gps that is to be implanted underneath the skin **mi dragón adorable**." He told me while pulling out the different ingredients he had planned on using and setting them on the kitchen counter.

"I do believe that but how is it possible? That kind of technology doesn´t exists yet?" He looked up from the meat he was cutting and told me sincerely.

"I know, I made it, it´s a prototype waiting to be tested." I stared at him in awe and managed to get out.

"You made this? This is incredible Hector, you´re amazing!" I exclaimed and couldn´t stop the happy giggle that escaped from me while I, very carefully, put the small device back where I had found it. When I returned to the kitchen, Hector had poured each of us a glass of red wine and I jumped up to sit on an unused part of the counter before accepting the glass and sipping the wine.

"So, how are you getting along with the rest of the guys? Do I need to have a _talk_ with someone?" Hector asked while watching me from the corner of his eye.

"No you don´t have to step in Hector, everybody´s been real nice to me but if that changes I let you know. I just wished that Zero could come back soon so I could actually meet him again, sure I´ve talked to him over the phone but that´s not the same as seeing him in person." I told him and watched curiously as he seasoned the meat and put it in a hot pan on the stove.

"Last thing I heard Zero´s coming back tomorrow, you should be able to see him then." He told me comfortingly and patted my knee before concentrating on his cooking once more. We talked about everything and nothing while he fixed us some food and I didn´t have to wait long for a taste of the deliciously smelling food he was putting on the table.

When the food was all gone and my second glass of wine was empty he asked the question that I had been waiting for the entire night.

* * *

"The day when I first met you **mi dragón adorable**, you told me that you were not worth killing for because you were broken. What did you mean?"

"Exactly what I said, I am broken." I told him without looking at him.

"How are you broken then? In what way?"

"In every way possible…" I answered in a whisper and immediately after there was a knock on the door that let us know that Cal had returned to the building. I took the chance given to me to escape and stood up with a quick thank you for dinner/good night/see you later to Hector.

I didn´t dare relax and exhale until the door closed between us, I knew that he was going to make me tell him sooner or later but right now I´d rather it be later.

I looked up at Cal´s tall form and smiled sheepishly at him.

"Everything alright kitten?" He asked with a hint of concern in his voice.

"Yeah everything´s fine… I´m just tired and a tiny bit drunk." I admitted with a small blush and I heard Cal chuckle contently before unlocking his own apartment door that was just a little down the hallway from Hectors.

"How about a cup of hot chocolate then? That´ll make you sleep like a child, I guarantee it." He asked with a smile and I eagerly nodded my head as Cal switched on the lights. Then we both froze in our movements and simply stared.

His entire living room and most of the kitchen was overrun with different kinds of shopping bags and I felt my eyes widen when I realized that they all belonged to me.

"Oh my god what did Ella do?!" I exclaimed half amused, half panicked. Of course that made Cal burst out laughing and I glared at him for a few moments before joining him. When we managed to calm down Cal told me.

"See if you can´t find some pajamas in one of all these bags and we can have a mini-sleep-over in my bedroom since the rest of the apartment is pretty occupied at the moment, I have a TV in there so we can make some hot chocolate and popcorn and watch a movie if you want?" I looked at the ridiculous amount of bags, knowing a challenge when I saw one and told him.

"Sounds good but I make no promises that I will be able to find some pajamas in this mess." That made him to once again burst out laughing but he soon recovered and ventured into the kitchen to make us some drinks and snacks. I on the other hand tackled the bags in the living room, trying to find something that looked like pajamas.

After ten minutes I had still to find a bag containing pajamas but then I had only gone through about a quarter of all the bags in the living room only. With a sigh I gave up the hunt for sleeping wear and joined Cal in his bedroom anyway, telling him.

"The pajamas seem like a lost cause… you mind if I borrow something of yours?" He shook his head and told me.

"No it´s fine, my clothes are your clothes." He was busy picking out a few movies from his extensive collection so he didn´t see what I borrowed from his closet and took with me inside his bathroom. I quickly changed and put the clothes I had been wearing in one of the bags that were only half full before I entered Cal´s bedroom and curled up on his large bed as he had his back to me, starting the movie.

When he turned around I had to clasp a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. His expression when he realized that I was dressed in only a pair of his boxers and an old navy t-shirt was an incredible I-wished-I-had-a-camera moment.

But he soon got himself together and we watched the movie, drank the hot chocolate, ate the popcorn and then fell asleep while still leaning on each other when the credits started rolling.


	9. Old friends and the destiny of Morelli

I do not own anything except for Kat and the storyline

* * *

**DRAGON**

_Chapter Nine – Old friends and the destiny of one Joe Morelli_

* * *

The next morning I was eating breakfast in the break room when Stephanie came in, looking like she was searching for someone. Her eyes locked on me and she walked over and took the seat across from me.

"Morelli´s trial is tomorrow." She told me seriously and I felt my eyes widen in surprise.

"Tomorrow? So soon? How come I didn´t know about this earlier then?" I asked her, hoping that she could give me some answers. The trial shouldn´t be for another few weeks at least.

"Yes, tomorrow. His lawyer managed to get it pushed forward because of the danger his client was in when staying in county jail until the trial, since he´s a police officer they accepted that excuse and pushed it forward. And I guess your lawyer is as clueless to this as you were, you should call him so that he´ll be prepared." She told me and nibbled on a healthy cupcake from the platter Ella had left for us.

"Yeah I´ll do that… What about you? Are you coming to the trial?" I asked her while draining the last bit of coffee from my cup.

"I don´t think so… Not unless I have to. I know what he did was very wrong but he wasn´t always like that, and I rather remember the good times than the person he has become. You don´t mind do you? A few of the Rangeman guys will go with you for security reasons."

"Nah, I don´t mind. I get what you mean." I told her and stood from my seat. "I need to see Ranger, you wanna come with me?" She stood as well and followed me to Ranger´s office, he was on the phone when we got there but he waved at us to take a seat on his couch so I assumed that it was nothing terribly important or secretive. He hung up and then turned towards us, asking.

"Now what can I do for you two?"

"I talked to Cal last night about my living situation and he mentioned that you might be able to move around some guys to open up an apartment for me? If you can´t then I understand of course but I really have nowhere else to go…" He simply looked at me for a moment before he said.

"I can get an apartment open for you, I didn´t do it before because then there was no reason to but now there is. Two of the guys that are living here right now are supposed to be moving to the Miami office next week anyway so I´ll simply have them to share one apartment for the last few days, I´m sure that they won´t mind when I tell them why. I can probably have an apartment open for you tonight."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really."

I left Rangers office with a smile on my face and a relieved and secure feeling in my chest. Everything would work out alright.

* * *

After calling my lawyer I went down to the pool to burn off some energy, I had decided that I could go for a swim today if I took it easy… and didn´t tell Bobby about it. I opened the door marked 'pool' and carefully peaked inside. My eyes were immediately drawn to the large pool and only passed by the other doors in passing.

I did note however that other than the changing rooms, there was a sauna and a room with a massage table and some massaging chairs.

I returned to Cal´s room since all of my stuff was still there and managed to find a bag of different bikinis and other swimwear. I picked out a navy blue bikini that would allow me to move around freely in the water without having to worry about accidentally exposing myself to other eyes.

Then I went back to the pool area and walked inside the ladies changing room, it was a small room with only ten or so lockers. But as far as I knew Ella, Steph and I were the only women hired by Rangeman Trenton, there wasn´t any need for something bigger.

I quickly changed and picked up a towel from a shelf on the wall before going out to the pool itself. I scanned the room to see if any of the other navy guys were here but it seemed that for now at least, I was alone.

I dived into the water, relaxing at the familiar feeling before starting to swim laps. Time ceased to exist for me and only when I felt that I should probably stop swimming before I started to hurt did I take a look at the large clock on the wall.

I had been swimming for almost an hour.

And here I had planned on taking it easy…

Suddenly there was noise coming from the men´s changing room and I realized that I was about to have company. I closed my eyes and sent a small prayer to anyone who was listening that Bobby wouldn´t come out of that door until I was gone from here.

Thankfully someone must´ve heard me and deemed me good enough to get some slack because while several Rangeman entered the pool area, Bobby was not among them. Cal, Hal, Ram, Manny and Zero entered the room though and I gave away a girly squeal at the sight of Zero.

They all stopped in their tracks at my horrid, girly squeal and all of them looked my way. Cal, Hal, Ram and Manny all greeted me politely but I kept my eyes on Zero, it was the first time I saw him since he left my navy seals team and gods I had missed him. We used to be really close and by his shocked then happy face I would say that he had missed me as well.

"Dragon? Damn girl I never thought I would see you leave the navy… what made you change your mind?" I knew my carefully created façade fell a little, I had forgotten how well that man could read me… perhaps meeting with him had been a bad idea…

"Dragon?" He asked again when I didn´t say anything and I knew that the others also had their eyes on me now. I could feel it.

"It´s still classified information Zero, I can´t talk about it, you know that. But let´s not worry about it, come tell me what you have been doing since leaving the navy instead." I told him with a smile and he as well as the others joined me in the water.

Cal, Hal, Ram and Manny started to swim laps but Zero only made his way to me and pulled me against him in a hug before whispering in my ear.

"I heard what happened to you at Steph´s apartment, should you really be swimming laps with that shoulder of yours?"

"No, but I did anyway. Would you mind terribly if I asked you to join me in the sauna instead?" I whispered back and when he nodded eagerly I couldn´t keep back a small laughter. We exited the pool and instead entered the hot and humid sauna where we sunk down in a hot tub and let the hot water caress our bodies.

"Soo… what have you been doing since you left? Have you worked here all the time?" I asked him and sunk deeper into the water, enjoying the heat and slight massage I was given by the jets of water.

"Yep, I started out in the Miami office though. I only moved here a couple of years ago when their last explosives expert went boom. I like it here though…" He told me with a lazy smile and laced his fingers with mine. "I really missed you though Dragon I never thought I would see you as a Rangeman employee. I figured you would be navy for life."

"I thought so too…" I admitted but didn´t say anything else. Instead we fell into friendly silence and simply enjoyed ourselves. I watched him from the corner of my eye for any changes in his physic. His brown hair was still cut in a boyish style and his eyes were as grey as ever. His muscles were well developed and I could tell that he took care of his body. My eyes stuck on the blue dragon tattooed on the inside of his wrist and he noticed me looking and asked.

"Do you remember why I got this?" I nodded my head.

"Of course I do, I went with you when you had it done… You said you wanted it because it reminded you of me, that I had saved your life and that you wanted the other guys outside of our tight little group to know that you owed me your life. Do you really still feel like that Zero? You saved my ass as well…" I told him sincerely.

"I´ll always feel like I owe you, remember the mission before I got my tattoo? I don´t know what you had to go through to get my sorry ass out from behind enemy lines but I know that you still have nightmares about it, I can never repay you for that you know." I turned my head away, he was getting too close to one of the few subjects I had sworn never to talk about again, only my former boss and a psychologist knew about that mission and that was two more than I wanted to.

I knew he took notice of how uncomfortable I was getting because he left that subject alone and instead told me of all the fun and embarrassing things he had seen and done with the guys here. When I finally left the pool area about an hour later I felt a lot lighter and happier, Zero had always managed to cheer me up. Maybe because he saw me at my worst and I saw him at his… Anyway we had reconnected like we had never been apart and I couldn´t wait for the next opportunity to hang out with him.

* * *

I ran into Bobby on my way up to five and he told me that they had opened up an apartment for me and that all of my bags had been moved there. He followed me there and made sure I got the keys and that I had everything I needed before insisting that he´d check out my shoulder. I allowed him to do that but then I had to listen to him give me a speech about not overwork my shoulder before he finally left me alone to unpack and settle in in my new apartment.

I checked the small apartment out and was very happy with what I saw. The apartment was small, only a small bedroom, a bathroom, a tiny kitchen and a small living room but I didn´t need any more space than that. The entire apartment was done in sandy beige and dark navy blues and felt very calming to my fractured and badly repaired mind and soul. The living room held a comfy-looking couch, a 42 inch screen TV, two bookcases and a rather good sound system. The kitchen had top of the line appliances and a small, square kitchen table shoved up against one wall with three chairs belonging to it. The bathroom was pristine white and had a shower stall, a toilet and a sink. Nothing fancy but not shabby either. The bedroom was by far my favorite, dark wooden floors, navy blue walls, light wood furniture and a lot of plushy looking pillows and cozy blankets. The bed was queen sized and there was also a nine drawer dresser, a full length mirror, two wardrobes and a 20 inch TV on the wall opposite the bed.

It was a cozy little nest perfect for nights when sleep would elude me and I felt the need to hide from the world for a little while.

I opened the fridge and found to my happiness that the fridge was stocked with all of my favorite things. My eyes locked on to a covered dish with a post-it note on top of it. On the note was reheating instructions for the casserole in my hands as well as a message from Ella where she told me she had stocked my fridge and that if I needed anything I was to give her a call.

I smiled and put the casserole in the oven to reheat, night was falling quickly outside and I was getting hungry. While the casserole reheated I unpacked all of the bags that Ella had gotten me and when I was done with that time-consuming work the apartment felt like home and the casserole was ready to be eaten.

After enjoying the food I called my lawyer Dan for the second time that day to go over our planes for tomorrow. I had known him since I left Trenton and he was flying here from LA to be able to represent me against Morelli. He was one of the very few who knew why I had to leave Trenton and I trusted him almost as much as I did Zero or Stephanie.

I was nervous about tomorrow, I wasn´t going to say otherwise but I knew that with Dan the lawyer representing me and Rangeman providing security I had the best chances I could get to win this trial and come home from it unharmed. But I still had a feeling something bad was going to happen…

* * *

The next morning I woke up early and full of nervous energy as I was, I headed down to the gym to hopefully burn some of it off. I restricted myself to running on the treadmill and swimming laps for half an hour though, I didn´t want to be in pain from overexerting myself in case something happened.

I returned to my apartment about two hours later and stood in the shower for half an hour, enjoying the silence and the hot water. I emerged from the shower smelling faintly of blueberry and vanilla and dressed myself in black cargo pants and nice light grey silk tank top; I also put on a black denim jacket. Then I geared up and made sure that I carried all of my licenses and nothing illegal before walking out the door.

I hadn´t eaten breakfast yet so I made a detour to the fifth floor to snatch a sandwich and a bottle of water from the break room before going down to the garage where my security detail would be waiting for me.

When I reached the garage I saw which four guys that would be going with me to court. Cal, Hector, Zero and Santos were all leaning against a large, black Hummer H3. Santos was the first one to notice me and he told me.

"Hi gorgeous, you ready to do this?" I nodded my head and answered.

"Yeah I just want it over and done with…" I admitted and released a tired sigh before climbing into the car and taking the middle back seat since I assumed we were riding in this monster of a car because I would be more protected in it. They might´ve not known it but I had done protection detail before and knew all the little things myself.

Cal slid in behind the wheel with Hector taking the front passenger seat and then Santos and Zero got in on either side of me before we left the garage. The ride over to the courthouse felt like it lasted forever and not the good kind of forever either… I was really nervous for some reason, I knew I would win against Morelli without a problem but something about all this felt off to me and that worried me.

When we reached the courthouse I could see that a lot of people had already gathered in the hopes of getting a seat in the courtroom during this trial. When I exited the car I was immediately getting yelled at by Morelli´s family and friends. I figured that the silent one´s secretly were on my side.

The people were blocking the entrance but with my four Rangeman guys surrounding me and Carl Costanza and Big Dog clearing a path we did make it inside the building in one piece. Both Carl and Big Dog gave me a small smile and a comforting clap on the shoulder before they took us to the room where I would meet with my lawyer before the trial started.

I entered the room alone, Cal, Hector, Zero and Santos guarding me from their positions in the hallway outside the room. The room was windowless and had only one door so I would be safe in there with my lawyer. The man that was leaning against a desk was in his early sixties, his dark hair was greying but his eyes were as sharp as ever. He looked up at me with eyes the same color as mine and gave me a smile.

"Hi Kitty Kat, ready to put a cop behind bars?"

He was my uncle, my father´s brother that I hadn´t known I had until my first year in the military. My father was dead, he was a navy seal and didn´t come back from a mission. He was the reason I became a navy seal as well.

My father died when I was six years old.

When I left Trenton for Los Angeles and signed myself up for the military I was angry at the world but when I learned that my father had a brother a little of that anger disappeared. When I met my uncle for the first time and he realized that we were in fact family, he took me under his wing and another piece of the anger withered away and died. Then as I rose through the ranks in the navy I lost more and more of that crippling anger and now only a small shard of it was left in me as a reminder of what I went through as a teenager in this town.

"Sure thing Uncle Dan… though I wish this was over already, something´s feeling off to me and I can´t seem to figure out what…" I told him thoughtfully.

"I´m sure everything´s fine, you work for Ranger now don´t you? He takes care of his employees as if they were a part of his ranger team, nothing´s going to happen if he and his guys can prevent it." Uncle Dan reassured me. I smiled at him to let him know that I appreciated his reassurance even if I still felt that something was off, perhaps my feeling didn´t come from the trial itself but from something else?

I shoved it to the back of my mind for now and then sat down with Uncle Dan and went through the case and the evidence we had against Morelli. The pictures of the injuries he gave me made a hard and angry look appear in my uncle´s eyes but he kept his feelings under control and soon we were called to the courtroom to begin the trial.

I sat in the front of the courtroom with Dan on my right side and Santos on my left; he was allowed to sit there because of the explosion in Stephanie's apartment. We didn´t know if I was a target as well so he was acting as my bodyguard during the trial. On the bench directly behind me were Zero, Hector and Cal sitting as well as a few of the Rangeman that was off duty to my surprise.

Either Morelli was more disliked than I had imagined or I had managed to make some friends. Perhaps it was a little of both… I could also see a few of Stephanie's friends and family in the courtroom. Lula, Connie and Mary-Lou were sitting on my side of the room, as did Steph´s grandmother Edna Mazur.

Her mother was sitting on Morelli´s side thought and I didn't want to think about the expression Steph was going to make when someone told her that. There were quite a few Morelli family members attending the trial as well. I could see Morelli´s mother and grandmother as well as his brother Anthony and his cousin Mooch.

The trial went off without a hitch and Morelli was declared guilty on all charges, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison and had to pay Stephanie and I a hefty sum each. Morelli didn´t say a single word to me during the entire trial but I could feel him glare at me and it was eating at my nerves.

I could also feel that someone in particular from the Morelli´s in the audience was glaring daggers at me. I discreetly turned my head and when my eyes found Anthony Morelli´s I knew who was glaring at me like he wanted me to drop dead. I couldn´t understand why though…

But I shook it off and as soon as I was allowed to leave my Rangeman quartet boxed me and Dan in and once again with Carl and Big Dog´s help, we managed to get out from the building again. We were only a few steps away from the car when it exploded in a vicious fireball that turned everything to heat and then blackness.

* * *

Let me know what you think! Who do you think is responsible for all the explosions?

Love C


	10. Breakdown

I do not own anything except for Kat and the storyline.

* * *

AN: **Warning:** A lot of angst in this chapter people.

* * *

**DRAGON**

_Chapter Ten - Breakdown_

* * *

I regained consciousness to a world of chaos.

People were screaming and the air was filled with dark, acrid smoke and the smell of burning metal and rubber. Something heavy was lying on top of me and I blinked away the blurriness from my eyes to see what it was.

A painfully familiar head covered with brown hair and a face contorted in pain.

Zero was lying on top of me, having protected me from the explosion with his own body. And now he was hurt, badly. I could feel blood pouring from a wound on his back, coloring me red before pooling underneath me. I was frozen, staring up at him with wide, unblinking eyes.

One of his eyes cracked open barely enough for me to see that his pupils were dilated in pain and he swore violently at seeing my shocked and distant expression, making me flinch. He ground his teeth together at the pain that was obviously really bad and exhaled slowly before he started talking to me.

"Hey look at me Dragon, we´re going to be fine. You´re going to be fine and I are going to be fine, there´s no need to worry. Just breathe and stay with me here Dragon." My unfocused, unblinking eyes were somewhat looking up at his face and I was both blind and deaf to what went on around us. I was on the brink of losing myself in the past, memories of fucked up missions and lost comrades pushing against the mental walls I had built to protect myself.

The shock from the explosion and seeing Zero injured because of me had made me lose my grip on reality and I was teetering on the brink of insanity.

Then someone lifted Zero off me, put him on a stretcher and took him away from me. The screams of pain he made when he was lifted off me froze me in place but when the ambulance with him inside drove away with flashing lights and screaming sirens I broke.

I screamed until my voice broke before I felt the prick of syringe and the world once again turned black around me.

* * *

I woke with a start, panicked and disoriented and immediately rolled off the bed I was lying on to go into a defensive position with my back against the wall. I didn´t know where I was or what had happened at the moment, all I knew was that my teammate had been taken away from me, screaming in pain and that I needed to find him and get out ASAP.

"Kat, are you alright?" a female voice asked me and I turned my head in the direction of her voice and saw to my horror that Stephanie was here as well, had they taken her too? She reached out for me and following my instincts I grasped her wrist and quickly pulled her behind me. She struggled a little against me and almost seemed to want to go back to her kidnappers, had she gotten the Stockholm syndrome?

But then she stopped moving and remained still behind me to my relief, I didn´t want to hurt her but I would knock her out if that was the only way I could get her out. Then my attention was drawn to a dark skinned man that had dared to take a step closer and I growled at him, warning him to keep his distance. He didn´t heed my warning and instead took another step forward and I prepared myself for a fight, most of my gear was missing but I still had a few acupuncture needles and my length of wire on me.

I kept my eyes on the dark skinned man's slow approach and let a feral smile graze my lips as he ignored his comrades advice of keeping his distance and instead foolishly coming closer to his death. I discreetly pulled my wire from its hiding place inside the bottom seam of my shirt so that I would be ready to act as soon as my black clad enemy was close enough.

The wire could easily decapitate him if I wanted to.

I was waiting for him to move the last few inches before he was in my reach when another voice rose from the enemies and stopped him.

"If you value your life Bobby, you will not move another inch in her direction."

When the dark skinned man heeded this one's warning and instead of coming closer, started to move away from me I lost my grin and growled at him in disappointment instead. I wanted his blood on my hands, they had taken Zero away and kidnapped Stephanie, they would pay their debt in blood.

"What are you doing Ranger? Can´t you see that she obviously needs help? She´s probably just confused and disoriented." The dark skinned man argued with the one that had stopped him from losing his life and I desperately searched for a way out of here while they talked and didn´t have their full concentration on me.

"No Bobby she´s not 'just confused and disoriented', she´s trapped in memories. She doesn´t know where she are or who we are, right now we are her enemy and she´s following her instincts."

"Then what are we going to do?" The dark skinned one asked, looking truly afraid for the first time as he realized how close to death he had been.

"We leave them alone in the room for a few minutes and then we send in Santos to talk to her." The other one told him and while I could see that the dark skinned one wanted to protest, he wisely kept his mouth shut except for one question.

"How do you know she´s not going to hurt Bomber?"

"Why would she? She most likely believes that we have kidnapped Steph and she thinks that she is saving her from us. Judging by her reaction when they took Zero away that might have been what triggered this and in that case she most likely believes we have him as well." The other one told him before finally leaving the room and closing the door behind them.

We were alone.

I turned around and frantically checked Stephanie for injuries while demanding to know what they had done to her. She only stared at me with wide, frightened eyes and said.

"What are you talking about Kat? They haven´t done anything to me, why are you acting as if they are the enemy?" Her face clearly showed her confusion when I started to swear before speaking again.

"Damn I think you may have the Stockholm syndrome Steph… Of course they are the enemy they kidnapped you! But don´t worry I´m going to get you out of here." I promised her before the door opened once again and a single person entered the room.

* * *

**Santos POV**

I knew something bad had happened when I was called down to Bobby´s office ASAP. Everything had been chaotic since the car exploded yesterday and today didn´t seem to be any better.

The explosion was a nasty one, designed to do damage and not one of us came away completely unscathed. Tank and Hector had gotten a few burns, both from the explosion itself and from the debris. I had a few cuts and bruises but Zero got the worst of it. He had a metal piece piercing his back close to the spine. He had protected Kat from any physical damage but judging by her reaction when he was taken away she might have suffered from some mental damage.

I reached Bobby´s office and noticed that all the guys that had been in there now where standing outside in the hallway, all except for beautiful.

That´s when I realized that something really was wrong here.

"What´s going on? What did you need me for?" I asked Ranger, hoping that he might shed a little light on the situation.

"Kat thinks that we are the enemies, that we have kidnapped Steph and taken Zero away from here. She´s holed up in the med bay with Steph. I need you to go in there and try to make her come back to the present. Don´t go too close though, she would have killed Bobby had I not stopped him." Ranger told me and I immediately understood what was happening, it had happened to both me and Ranger before as well.

It was something that most people who did government missions were in the danger of, when we knocked Kat out yesterday after Zero had been taken away we triggered her protective instincts. Her mind told her that she was on a mission that had gone wrong and that she needed to protect herself, Zero and Stephanie.

I slowly opened the door to the med bay and hoped that she wouldn´t just kill me on sight.

* * *

**Kat POV**

I immediately dropped back into my defensive stance but this person was intelligent enough to stop only a few feet inside the room, holding his hands out to the sides so that I could see that he held no weapons in them.

I didn't get out of my defensive stance but I didn´t attack him either, instead I waited for him to state his purpose here. And then he started telling me things about me that he couldn´t possibly have known and I was starting to feel that something about this situation was not as it should.

He then told me about a trial that I had supposedly attended and about the car exploding when we were about to leave and about Zero getting hurt while protecting me and I started to vaguely recall the things he spoke of. Then I was horrified.

I remembered.

I remembered where I was and who I was with and I couldn´t grasp that I had lost control so completely. I had almost killed Bobby! I looked up at Santos whom I now recognized and said with a shaky, vulnerable and terrified voice.

"Lester? What did I do?"

I manage to keep myself together while he explained what I had done but I felt myself wanting to fall apart at any given second. It took me a while to convince them that I was fine now and for Bobby to allow me to go back to my own apartment. Then it took me another hour to convince everyone that all I wanted was to be alone and that I would be fine on my own. Eventually Steph and Ranger took notice of the desperation in my eyes and forced the others out before leaving as well.

As soon as the door closed behind them I locked it and engaged all of the locks I had installed myself which included three deadbolts, convincing me that no one would get in here unless I wanted them to. Then I locked myself in my bedroom as well before allowing myself to break down completely.

* * *

I had no clue how much time had passed as I laid curled into a fetal position in the middle of my bed and I didn´t care. I was so ashamed that I had thought the Rangeman guys were my enemies and I was terrified of what could have happened had they gotten too close to me. I would never forgive myself if I hurt one of them…

I had heard knocking on my front door a few times, but they hadn´t manage to get in so I didn´t particularly care right now. I hated myself for being so pathetic but right now I needed Zero to tell me that everything was alright. The way he was taken away from me on the parking lot outside of the courthouse reminded me all too much of that fucked up mission. The mission I had done everything in my power to simply forget, the one where Zero had been captured behind enemy lines and I had lost our other teammates in my desperate attempt to save him.

And now I couldn´t push the memories of that mission away again but with them at the front of my mind I couldn´t function.

When I first locked myself away in my bedroom I had fallen to my knees, crying. When the tears finally ran out they were replaced by anger and I had broken almost everything in here, my hands were bruised and bleeding but I didn´t feel any pain in them.

All the pain in my body was concentrated in my chest, anguish tearing at my insides and tormenting my fractured mind. When there wasn´t anything left to break in here except for myself I had curled up on the bed, trying to hold myself together for a little while longer.

Then I remember how Steph had looked at me with frightened eyes, she had been frightened of me… and I lost my last grip on sanity.

I screamed.

Scream after scream tore from my throat, each and every one of them full of heartbreaking agony. I gripped my arms harder, hoping to hold my shattered soul together and wishing for the pain to simply go away. I didn´t notice when my nails broke skin and drew blood, I only perceived the pain in my chest that was driving me towards the edge of insanity.

* * *

**Santos POV**

I was laying on my back on the couch in my living room and listening for sounds from Kat´s apartment. I lived right next to her and since she had apparently upgraded the locks on her door, we couldn´t get in to check on her so I did what I could, listening for any alarming sounds from within my own apartment.

During the short time I had known her, she had really wormed her way in my heart and I found myself really caring about her. Maybe even more than as a friend…

Suddenly a tormented scream tore through the air, scaring the living daylights out of me. I was on my feet and in a defensive crouch before I had time to process where the scream came from and what it meant. Then another scream sounded and I realized that they came from Kat´s apartment. I was running out of my apartment only to see that there were already a few other guys outside her door, frantically trying to get inside.

They were having no success.

They let me through to the door when I got there, partly because I was above them in rank and partly because except for Hector, I was the best when it came to picking locks and B & E. I quickly examined the door and swore loudly when I realized what was keeping us out.

Deadbolts. Three of them.

Then Ranger was beside me and demanded to know why we were kept out. He had made all the others leave so only he, Tank and I remained outside Kat´s door. With the breakdown she was having it would be a bad idea to overwhelm her. I was surprised that Bobby wasn´t here but then on the other hand that might be a good thing…

With what almost happened between the two of them earlier that might be too much right now.

"She has installed deadbolts, three, I believe… there´s no way we can open this door from the outside." I told him and winced openly as yet another scream reached us. The amount of agony contained in these screams was taunting us and I had a feeling I would be getting nightmares from her screams alone, they were hauntingly tormenting.

"Then we break the door down, I can´t stand to listen to this anymore. Can you imagine what kind of pain she must be in to scream like this?" Tank said and backed away a little. He looked like he was in agony, as did Ranger and probably I too, neither of us could stand to hear her scream like this and I didn´t even want to think about how much she was hurting right now. Right now I just wanted to get to her and make her stop screaming.

Then Tank charged at the door and when his shoulder connected with the door he threw his entire body-weight against it. The door held but the doorframes cracked ominously so he backed up and prepared to do it again. I knew his shoulder must hurt like hell after the first attempt but he didn´t indicate in any way that he was in pain as he charged at the door again.

The door still held but I could see that the frame was starting to splinter.

Tank backed up once again but now I could see that he was hurting but he attacked the door for a third time anyway.

The door still held and I wanted to scream in frustration but then something else caught my attention. Stephanie was standing in the hallway a few feet away from us with a tormented expression and tears streaming down her face. Tank and Ranger noticed her as well and she begged us.

"Please make it stop! You have to help her, please help her!" I shared a look with Ranger before giving him a miniscule nod. I watched him go to beautiful, putting his arm around her before leading her away from here with a single look back at me and Tank.

Another wailing scream did its best to break our hearts and with a desperation I fully understood did Tank attack the door a final time. And this time it broke from the force Tank was using, leaving both the door and Tank on the floor, the latter moaning in pain.

I clapped him on his good shoulder when I hurried past him and told him.

"Thanks big guy, great work. Now go and see Bobby about that shoulder. I can take it from here." I didn´t wait for a response and instead kept moving towards the closed bedroom door that was the last barrier between Kat and I. This door was locked as well but I had picked it open in ten seconds flat and with a second of hesitation I opened the door, almost scared about what I would be seeing on the other side.

The first thing I took notice of was that everything was broken, almost every single piece of furniture had been broken and the only thing still in one piece was the bed. Even the walls had dents in them for fucks sake!

The second thing I noticed was Kat.

She was lying in a fetal position on the bed, her hands bruised and bleeding. She gripped her own arms so tightly that she had broken skin, letting small rivulets of blood staining the sheets. Her face was contorted in pain and tears were streaming from her eyes. Her voice was starting to break from the constant screaming and the entire scene completely broke my heart.

I walked closer expecting her to notice me but she never did, I sat down on the bed carefully before reaching out for her and very gently touching one shaking shoulder.

* * *

Please let me know what you think! This chapter practically wrote itself and I´m actually a little scared of how easily I could write this thing...

Love C


	11. Sharing memories

I do not own anything except for Kat and the storyline

* * *

**DRAGON**

_Chapter Eleven – Sharing memories_

* * *

**Kat POV**

Something warm landed on my shoulder and I flinched violently away from it, I hadn´t noticed that someone had managed to enter the apartment. I shut myself up by biting down hard on my lower lip, hard enough to taste blood, and turned around so that I could see who had managed to get in despite my deadbolts.

Santos. Lester Santos.

He was standing close to the bed with his hand outstretched and a pained expression on his face, his eyes were dark with emotions. He carefully sat down on the edge of the bed and asked me with a soft voice.

"Kat… Gorgeous… Are you alright?" The genuine concern in his voice set me off and what was left of the walls in my mind crumbled and fell. Tears started falling from my eyes again and painful sobs tore from my throat.

No I wasn´t alright, not at all…

Suddenly my shaking body was gathered up against something warm… and comforting. I looked up through tear-filled eyes and saw that Santos had pulled me close to himself and was hugging my body against his own. I accepted the comfort given to me, buried my face against his chest and cried, letting all my pent up emotions out with the tears.

The entire time I cried Santos stayed with me, holding me close and whispering comforting words in my ear, his hand gently stroking my back in lazy patterns. I clutched at his shirt like he was my last lifeline and he let me, holding me tightly in return until the tears finally stopped and the sobbing receded to a sniffle every now and then.

I sighed tiredly and rubbed my eyes, I felt awful and imagined that I didn´t look any better than I felt. Mine and Santos positions had changed during my long cry and now he was on his back on the bed with me sprawled on top of him. My head was resting against his chest and my hands still clutched the fabric of his shirt like he would suddenly disappear if I let him go.

"I´m sorry…" I whispered to the sudden silence in the room and then I felt Santos shift underneath me.

"For what?" He asked his voice low and gentle.

"Everything… crying on you, destroying the room, almost killing Bobby, coming back to Trenton… I should just have died on my last mission, it would have been better for all of you if I hadn´t come here…" My voice was tired and broken and I just felt so very old, like I had lived long past what I should have…

"Don´t say that. Don´t ever say that you should have died because that´s not true. There´s a lot of people that would be devastated if you died. I know I would…" I didn´t respond to that and Santos tightened his grip on me before he spoke again.

"What brought all this on? Surely it isn´t simply because the car exploded? We´re looking into that by the way, it should have been close to impossible to plant a bomb on our car without someone noticing it or the alarms reacting."

"No it´s not because of the explosion itself." I told him with a sigh. "I guess that seeing Zero taken away from me, screaming in pain is what triggered it. You know that he was on my team while in the navy right? Well, there was a particularly bad mission where he was captured behind enemy lines and I guess my mind took me back there…" I explained and felt him stiffen for a moment before he relaxed again and told me.

"Tell me." The command was soft and gentle but it was undoubtedly a demand but for the first time ever I felt that maybe talking about that mission wouldn´t be so bad… Not with only me and Santos here and his warm, comforting hand tracing patterns on my back.

"We were headed for the extraction point to get out of the country when we were ambushed. I was leading a team of only three instead of the usual four, the last member of our group never showed up to the briefing and the general decided to send us in anyway. The group was made up from myself, Zero and a guy named Viper."

"Viper?" Santos questioned with a disbelieving smile.

"Yeah he got that nickname after he sneaked in his pet snake on base… Anyway, like I said we were ambushed on our way out to the extraction point, they knew we were in the country and which way we would be going for getting out so they had traveled ahead of us and set up traps. It was nothing fancy though, just a few explosives so that we couldn´t scatter in the jungle. What really caught us off guards was that our missing team member was with them."

"They had kidnapped him?" Santos asked and I could tell he was surprised.

"No he had betrayed us for money; he was the one who led them to us. He yelled some shit about not harming us if we came with them willingly but then they started shooting at us. Zero took a bullet to the leg and went down but when I turned around to go back for him Viper picked me up and kept running. I saw them grab Zero and I couldn´t do a thing about it thanks to Viper." I could tell from the tenseness in Santos body that he had his own thoughts about that incident but he didn´t speak them and let me continue.

"Viper managed to get us away from the bad guys but since he was still carrying me he couldn´t stay on his feet when he tripped over something. We tumbled down a steep hill and when we reached the bottom, Viper was dead. He had broken his neck in the fall. At first I just sat there, watching him as if he would get up and insult me for being heavy or something but when I realized that he really was dead I felt awful. I had been so angry with him for probably saving my life and that was the last thing he knew…" Santos didn´t say anything but he tightened his arms around me to comfort me, encouraging me to keep talking.

"The worst thing was that I had to leave his body there… I would have no chance of saving Zero in time if I first had to drag Viper´s body to the extraction point. And since Zero was still alive as far as I knew I put him first. I moved as fast as I dared to but it still took me four days to reach the small town where I suspected Zero was being held. My next problem was how I was going to get inside without raising suspicions." I paused for a second to draw in a calming breath before speaking.

"So I let them catch me… I… I don´t want to tell you what they did to me, but I´m sure you can imagine… They… played with me for five days before finally locking me and Zero up together. They had been told that their leader would come there in person to see us, and that depending on what he thought we would either be sold as slaves or killed on the spot. We were injured, exhausted, malnourished and dehydrated. We didn´t have our gear and Zero was suffering from the gunshot wound in his leg and we only had two days to get out. Sneaking out during the last night without alerting everyone was the hardest thing I have ever had to do but we did it somehow… and then we wandered through the jungle for almost two weeks, constantly terrified that they would find us and kill us, before we finally reached the extraction point and got out from that hell on earth." I could feel that Santos was almost shaking with held back emotions and the hold he had on me was close to bordering on painful.

"I´m sorry you had to go through that... I know how it is to be caught behind enemy lines and it´s not something I would wish on anyone." He whispered to me and I looked up at him, hoping that he would tell me a little more. I would really appreciate being distracted from the story I just told and I realized that I very much enjoyed listening to Santos talk. But I knew I couldn´t ask that of him so instead I told him.

"I´ll listen if you want to talk about it but if you don´t I understand." Santos chuckled underneath me and suddenly I was painfully aware of the position we were in, I could feel every inch of his body pressed against mine and suddenly the feeling of strong muscles moving underneath skin made me feeling very flustered.

"I don´t mind telling you, but I can´t tell you very much, most of it is still classified. Do you want to hear it anyway?" He asked and loosened his grip on me so that I could roll off him and curl up against his side instead. I nodded and gave him a tiny smile. I felt a thousand times better now that I had shared one of my most nightmare inducing missions with another person and wanted to do the same for him.

"I was sent in alone with a backup team close by, I was supposed to infiltrate a drug cartel to find out who the real leader was and then assassinate him. But they found me almost right away, I still think that they were told I would try and infiltrate them but I have no proof of that." He frowned and his eyes became distant for a moment before he continued.

"Anyway they tortured me to get me to tell them who I was working for and all that bullshit for a while but since I never told them anything they decided to kill me. Luckily for me that´s when Ranger and the others decided to bust in and save my sorry ass." We were silent after that, simply enjoying each other's company and for a little while I could forget about the chaos around me.

"What do I do now?" I asked him after a few minutes and he turned his head to the side so that he could look at me.

"What do you mean Kat?"

"Do I keep going like before? Do I ignore what almost happened or do I leave? Am I even allowed to stay with my clearly unstable mind?" I truly believed that they would have me leave and the thought of being alone after getting to know these guys was surprisingly terrifying. I had always been a loner and content by being alone but it seemed as if that had changed now.

"Of course you´re not leaving. No one will make you leave unless you want to just because of this, almost all of us here are ex-military and most of us has one time or another had an episode like you did in the med bay. We just didn´t expect it from you." Santos reassured me but I only frowned at him and asked aggressively.

"Because I´m a woman?"

"Because you seem so well adapted to civilian life." He told me and I believed him. How could I not when his amazing green eyes were practically begging me to. I snuggled closer to his warm body, hoping that he would let me know if I made him uncomfortable and asked a question which answer I was really dreading to hear.

"Does Bobby hate me now? I nearly killed him after all…"I asked and then let my voice trail off, still so very ashamed over my behavior.

"No he doesn´t hate you, I´m not actually sure that he is capable of hating at all. But from what the others told me it would have been his own fault if he had gotten killed, he should know better than anyone that you do not corner an ex-military like that. But could you tell me how you had planned on killing him if it doesn´t bother you too much? We have a bet going on and I´m hoping of scoring a few hundred…" He actually blushed a little, probably realizing how stupid it was to bet on that sort of thing but I answered him nonetheless.

"I pulled my wire from the hem of my shirt and planned on decapitating him with it." I answered shortly before rolling over so that he was facing my back instead, I didn´t want him to look at me right now.

"Hey don´t do that… please? Don´t hide from me…" He begged me and tugged gently on my shoulder to turn back around to face him. I turned back around but hid my face against the side of his throat instead of facing him.

"How about you pack some pajamas and a change of clothes and stay with me for tonight? We can eat some unhealthy dinner and watch a few movies… what do you say gorgeous?" He asked me and I couldn´t help but smile a little at his care-free attitude.

"Are you sure it isn´t just an excuse to get me out of this apartment? I have to clean up the mess I made of the bedroom…" I tried to argue with him but he was hearing nothing of it.

"The mess can wait and you can´t really stay in an apartment with no front door can you?" He shot back with his usual crooked smile in place and I felt myself blush a little at how sexy he looked like that while sprawled out in a bed before I realized what he had said.

"Wait a little what do you mean no front door? What happened to it?" He looked at me as if I had suddenly grown another head and answered.

"We broke it down of course, how did you figure we got in?"

"I don´t know but I had three deadbolts in place! How the hell did you manage to break down that door?" I asked him, stunned with the revelation that it was even possible to break down a door with that many deadbolts engaged.

"Ask Tank, he´s the one who did it. We wouldn´t have been able to get in if it hadn´t been for him. Anyway what do you say gorgeous, sleep-over at my place? We can order pizza if you want?" He offered, trying to convince me but I knew that if I wasn´t staying with him I sure as hell was going to be staying with someone else no matter what I thought about it. So I agreed.

"Fine, I´ll spend the night at your place."

We got off my bed, the only part of furniture in the bedroom that was still whole and I found a small bag that I threw some clothes and other necessities in before we left the demolished room together. I was surprised to see the front door lying on the floor and was impressed by the strength Tank must have to have been able to do that.

"Is Tank alright? He didn´t hurt himself did he?" I asked Santos and then whimpered quietly when he didn´t answer immediately, Tank had hurt himself then… Great now I feel even worse…

"It´s nothing serious, just a bruised shoulder I think… Just, just don´t put up another three deadbolts when we replace the door? There´s really no need for that in this building, no one can enter unless it´s confirmed that they´re visiting someone who lives here." He reassured me and I promised him that I wouldn´t install any more deadbolts despite my better judgment.

He let me inside his apartment that looked a lot like mine but went in different tones of browns and greens and I dumped my bag on his couch where I assumed I was spending the night.

"What kind of food would you like? I don´t know about you but I´m absolutely starving…" Santos asked and entered the kitchen, sticking his head inside the fridge before offering me a beer. I accepted the bottle and told him.

"Whatever you want is fine, I´m not a picky eater and I don´t have a craving for anything special right now." I followed him in the kitchen and jumped up to sit at the kitchen counter.

"Shorty´s pizza it is then… Will you be alright here by yourself while I go and get the food or do you want someone to keep you company?" He looked around for his keys while he talked to me but I spotted them sitting next to me on the counter so I picked them up and dangled them in front of his face while answering him.

"I´ll be fine on my own, I might take a shower if you don´t mind?" He took the keys from my open palm and told me.

"Of course you can use my shower, you don´t have to ask for permission. I´ll be right back then." He pressed a quick, light kiss to my forehead before he left the apartment and I heard the lock tumble, indicating that he had locked the door behind him.

I was frozen in place on the kitchen counter, he had kissed me. Sure it was only on the forehead but it was still a kiss and now I wondered what it meant. Was it a gesture of friendship or maybe something more? I shook my head to clear my thoughts and when that didn´t work I escaped to the bathroom in the hopes that a hot shower might help me.

But underneath the hot, relaxing spray of water my problem remained. What did the kiss Santos gave me mean?

I borrowed his shampoo and body wash and cleaned myself while I pondered that question. Did I want it to be just a token of friendship or did I want it to mean something more? I had loved another man not too long ago but he had died, would I be able to love again?

* * *

When Santos got back I was sitting on the couch, dressed in my pajamas and curled into a ball with a blanket around my shoulders. The TV was on but it was on mute to help me think.

"Everything alright gorgeous?" He asked me while unpacking the food in the kitchen.

"I´m fine… just thinking…" I told him and got up to help him, fetching us another beer each from the fridge while he carried the pizza and a roll of paper into the living room.

"Oh… about what? If you don´t mind me asking." He sat down on the couch and clicked on a ranger's game for us to watch while we ate. I sat down next to him and twisted the top off of my beer bottle, taking a long pull before answering him.

"About love… I loved a man not too long ago but he died and now I´m wondering if I am capable of loving again." He seemed stunned by my answer because he didn´t say anything for a long time and neither did he move. But after a few minutes he started eating again and told me.

"Love is not something that you can run out of, of course you´ll be able to love again. But what brought these thoughts on?" He asked, a sliver of concern in his voice.

"The kiss on my forehead actually… It made me wonder what it meant and then it eventually came down to if I could love again." I explained to him while snatching another piece of the pizza and chewing slowly.

"What did you want it to mean?" He asked me instantly, his voice a little darker and rougher than before. It made chills go down my spine and goosebumps break out over my body and when I turned to face him I saw that his pupils had dilated so the green was nearly invisible. It was sexy as hell but it also made me very nervous.

"I… I don´t know…" I answered him unsurely and looked away. I heard him take a deep breath and then let it out in a long exhale before he spoke again.

"Sorry I didn´t mean to pressure you. I just… Do you consider us friends?" He asked me and my head instinctively turned towards him, my mouth forming words without thought.

"Of course we´re friends!"

"Good, good… I thought so I just wanted to be sure. Do you see us becoming something more than friends then?" He continued to ask and I hesitated, but decided to be as honest with him as possible, he had deserved that much.

"I… I don´t know… I´m not sure… There is something that makes me think that we could be more than friends but I don´t know! I´m confused…" I admitted weakly and looked away. I heard him sigh but then he laughed a little and pulled me close to his own body with an arm around my shoulders.

"It´s alright Kat, how about we just take things slow and see where they lead then? We can just stay friends if it doesn´t work out but wouldn´t you rather know for certain than always wondering what could have been had you given us a chance?" His voice was smooth and silky like velvet and I felt comforted by his words.

"Okay… let´s take things slow and give it a try." I told him and his lips cracked into a wide heart stopping smile that really brought out his sexy, boyish look. He slowly leaned in closer and I stopped breathing, both nervous about and anticipating what would come next. Then his lips touched mine and all my worries disappeared and my defenses melted away.

The moment his lips touched mine I knew I loved him and that my heart belonged to him.

We only shared that one kiss but it was enough that my heart would speed up and flutter every now and then anyway. We finished watching the ranger's game and then changed the channel to an action movie of some kind.

We sat close together on the couch, simply holding hands but right now that was like balm for my troubled mind and I could almost feel tiny pieces of my mind and soul mend themselves simply from his touch.

Halfway through the movie I started to yawn and I discreetly shot a lock at my watch, it was getting late but I didn´t want to disturb Lester. But of course he noticed me yawn and asked me.

"Getting tired gorgeous?" I blushed a little and answered him quietly.

"Yeah, a little."

"Want to go to bed then? We don´t have to finish the movie you know, I myself could go for some sleep. The last two days have been rather tiring…" I only nodded and he shut off the TV without another word. Then he stood up and picked up both me and my bag from the couch, carrying me to his bedroom where he put me down on the bed.

I had been so surprised when he lifted me that I didn´t say a word until he put me down again. One part of me was thrilled with the feeling of his strong muscles moving against me and with the ease he carried me but another part of me wanted to yell at him and tell him that I wasn´t a weak civilian and could walk on my own.

But I knew he wasn´t thinking like that, he would have done that no matter who I was. It was just the kind of person he was. So I said nothing about it and instead asked him.

"I´m sleeping here?"

"Yes where did you think you were sleeping?" He asked me with a look from underneath long eyelashes.

"On the couch."

"Of course not, you sleep in the bed and if anyone here sleeps on the couch it will be me." He told me with finality I knew I could not argue with.

"Then we share the bed, it´s certainly big enough." I told him and gestured to the luxurious king sized bed I was seated on. Another grin lit up his face and he nodded his agreement, five minutes later both of us had brushed our teeth and dressed in our sleeping wear, ready for bed.

I was dressed in a pair of black short shorts and a simple white tank top, deciding to save the more exotic sleepwear for another time. Lester was dressed in dark green silk boxers and nothing else.

I did my best not to ogle him but had to settle for that I at least didn´t ogle him any more than he did me. When we settled down I was comfortably enveloped in his strong arms, his chest against my back, his warmth seeping over to me. I cuddled deeper into the pillow and let out a sight of contentment as I let sleep claim me.

* * *

Hey guys sorry for the wait, let me know what you think.

Love C


	12. Girl s night in

I do not own anything except for Kat and the storyline.

* * *

**AN:** All spanish comes from Google Translate.

* * *

**DRAGON**

_Chapter Twelve – Girls night in_

* * *

**_Dream sequence_**

_I was back in the damned jungle._

_Everywhere I looked I saw green bushes, trees and my ears were constantly assaulted from the sounds from the wildlife in the jungle. I was lying on my back on the ground, dressed in my military clothes and with my mission back-pack at my feet._

_Viper was standing over me and glared down at me. His teeth bared and parts of his flesh falling off his body and hitting the ground with dull thuds._

_"It is your fault I´m dead Dragon and now it´s time for you to pay for that." He told me darkly and kneeled down so that his knees were on my wrists, pinning me down. One of his hands disappeared behind his back and then his combat knife was pressed against my throat, hard enough for a few droplets of blood to appear._

_"You hold the blame for my lost life, so in return I´m going to take yours too." He told me ominously and then I knew only darkness._

_His knife had separated my head from my shoulders._

**_End dream sequence_**

* * *

I woke up just in time to hear myself scream and then Santos too was jolted awake. I tried to stop screaming but I couldn´t, the dream had felt too real and I was too haunted from guilt to try hard enough.

It took a few moments before Santos had gathered that there were no dangers here and then he focused on me, trying to soothe me. He gathered me in his arms and stroked my hair and back with gentle, calm movements that took away the edge of the terror I felt and I was able to stop screaming and calmed down a little, silent tears falling from my eyes.

I let the tears fall and eventually they stopped too, and I even felt a tiny bit better than before. Perhaps sharing the things that caused me pain would actually help me…

It was still really early in the morning so I allowed myself to fall back asleep in Santos arms and this time I slept without nightmares. The next time I woke up I was alone in the bed but I could hear the shower running. A part of me wanted to join him in the shower but another part of me held me back, telling me that it was too soon.

I reluctantly listened to the voice that told me to not join him and comforted myself with the thought that I would most likely get more chances to join him in the shower at a later date. For now I had a few other things to occupy my mind with. For example who it was that tried to blow me up and why.

I quickly dressed myself in dark grey cargo pants and a dark blue t-shirt that matched the color of my eyes before adding all of the stuff that I carried around on a daily basis to my person. When I was done with that I heard the shower turn off and I went to the kitchen to look for some kind of breakfast while Santos dressed and got ready for the day.

I didn´t find anything that was particularly tempting so I settled for a bowl of cereal that I finished just as Santos joined me in the kitchen.

"What are your plans for today Gorgeous?" He asked me as he poured himself a bowl of cereal as well.

"I have to go and talk to a few people, Ranger, Tank, Bobby, Steph, Zero and Hector. And I have to call uncle Dan. Other than that I haven´t anything planned, what´s your schedule?"

"Monitor shift with Ram until mid-afternoon, then I don´t know. Probably a work out before heading back here I think, will you stay here or in your own apartment tonight?"

"Depends if I have a door that locks or not by then, if I do I´ll stay in my own apartment otherwise I´ll stay here." I told him before standing up and giving him a chaste kiss before leaving with a 'see you later' over my shoulder.

I headed towards the stairs and cringed a little when I passed my still door-less apartment, I really should do something nice for Tank; he must be in pain from breaking down that door… When I reached the fifth floor I went directly to my cubicle and called my uncle Dan.

_"Hello?"_

"Hi uncle Dan, how are you? I hope you weren´t hurt the other day?"

_"Hi Kitty-Kat, no I wasn´t hurt. I was worried about you but Ranger called and told me you were fine."_

"Yeah I´m fine, a few bad memories came back to the surface though… that´s why I didn´t call you earlier. Anyway I just wanted to make sure that you were fine and that Morelli really went to prison."

_"I understand Kitty-Kat and it´s fine, I´m fine and Morelli is indeed in prison as he should be. Now if there wasn´t anything else you wanted I have to go, I have a client meeting in ten minutes."_

"No that´s it uncle Dan, good luck with the meeting and I´ll talk to you later. Bye."

_"Bye Kitty-Kat."_

I hung up the phone and a relived sigh escaped me, uncle Dan hadn´t been injured in the explosion thank god… Suddenly I felt someone standing behind me and I spun around while making my hand into a fist, fully prepared to punch the one that had managed to sneak up on me in the ribs.

Thankfully my fist was caught in a hand bigger than my own and I looked up to see that it was Hector that had sneaked up on me.

**"Tranquilo Dragón, no hay peligro aquí recordar. ¿Has hablado con Zero todavía?"** (Easy there Dragon, there's no danger here remember. Have you talked to Zero yet?)

**"Lo sentimos Hector ... No me refugiate, ¿cómo está?"** (Sorry Hector... No I haven´t, how is he?)

**"Él ser va a estar bien, pero tomará un tiempo, tuvieron que hacer una cirugía para arreglar su espalda y él tendrá que hacer terapia física durante unos meses, pero él va a estar bien otra vez. Tengo noticias acerca de la bomba si te interesa sin embargo?"** (He´s going to be alright but it will take a while, they had to do surgery to fix his back and he will have to do physical therapy for a few months but he will be alright again. I have news about the bomb if you´re interested though?)

"Of course I want to hear about the bomb Hector, I´m trying to figure out whom it is who´s trying to kill Stephanie and me." I told him and walked with him to the break room to grab some coffee.

"Yeah well the one who built the bomb knows what he´s doing but he is no professional. I would say that he might have gone through an explosives course in the military but nothing more."

"So military background… Could it be the mob? Steph have had a few run-ins with Terry Gilman and the Ramos family if I remember correctly?"

"No Dragón it´s not, the mob usually don´t do explosives but if they do you and/or Steph would have been dead. I would have suspected Morelli but all three bombs are the same and he has a waterproof alibi for the last bombing."

"Then perhaps it´s someone that didn´t want him to go to jail? Have we checked his family and close friends?" I asked Hector and he drained his half-full coffee cup before answering.

"No, but I´ll start a search now so we should have some answers to that question in a day or two. Take care Dragón and I´ll see you later." Then he left again and I returned to the office floor to look for Tank, I knew he had an office of his own next to Rangers so I started looking for him there.

He sat behind his desk with his eyes closed and a cold pack wrapped in a kitchen towel pressed to his shoulder. I immediately felt guilty, it was after all my fault that he had hurt himself and I had just turned around to walk away again when he called out to me.

"Kat?"

"Yeah?" I responded automatically and turned so that I could see him from the corner of my eye. He was watching me with unreadable eyes and it made me slightly nervous, was he angry with me?

"Come in here." He told me and I obeyed, closing the door behind me so that we were alone in his office. He kept his eyes on me as I slowly walked up to him until only the desk separated us. Then I stopped and prepared myself for being yelled at.

"Kat are you okay? You scared us half to death yesterday…" He asked me, his voice full to the brim with genuine concern. I blinked at him, that was not at all what I had expected to hear and I opened and closed my mouth a few times before I managed to speak.

"You´re asking me if I´m okay? I should ask you that, it wasn´t I who broke down a door that was locked with three deadbolts after all. How´s your shoulder?"

"Don´t worry about me little one, I´m just a little sore and bruised. I´m more worried about you, what made you scream like that?" The honest worry he held for me and the way he diminished his own injury because it was my fault made tears well up in my eyes and I had to blink rapidly to keep them from falling.

"I doubt that, I´m really sorry that you hurt yourself because of me. I was just overwhelmed by everything that had happened and that I lost control and then some bad memories resurfaced and…"

"Calm down little one." Tank told me and pulled me around his desk so that I was sitting in his lap with his arms around me. "There´s no need to fret, everything will be alright." The tears welled up again and this time I couldn´t stop them from falling. But even though they fell, they were silent so I let them fall and drew comfort in that Tank was the only one seeing them and that he didn´t mind nor would he tell the others.

* * *

When I left Tank´s office a few minutes there were no signs of me crying but I felt a little less guilty and had a plan for making it up to Tank. The plan was named chocolate chip cookies.

I was just thinking about who I should go and talk to next when the door to Ranger´s office opened and he called out for me.

"Got a minute Kat? I need to talk to you." I was once again filled with dread but entered Ranger´s office with my head held high and my back straight. If he was going to fire me I would not show him how much it would hurt.

"Take a seat." He told me and I obeyed as he took his own seat behind his desk. "How are you?" Was his next question and I felt relief fill me, surely he wouldn´t ask how I was if he was going to fire me.

"As well as can be expected." I answered vaguely but Ranger´s intelligent eyes never left mine and after a few minutes of silence he sighed and gave me a weary smile.

"You don´t have to keep your mask on around me Kat, how are you really? Santos and I have most likely just as bad memories of fucked up missions as you and we should help each other... If you want to talk I´ll listen." He promised me and I allowed my tense posture to be replaced by a relaxed one and gave him a small, genuine smile before telling him.

"Thanks Ranger but I think I´m going to be okay, I talked to Santos last night and I think I might do that again. I appreciate the offer though."

"As long as you talk to someone about the things haunting you. I did the mistake when I left the rangers that I never told anyone about what I had gone through on my missions and it nearly broke me. I just don´t want the same thing to happen to you… You stayed in the navy longer than I was a ranger so you surely have plenty of fucked up missions behind you."

"I´m working on it, I promise that I´ll let you know if I need help with anything." I told him honestly and he nodded before changing the subject.

"About needing help, I could really use yours. I have to go to Miami this afternoon and won´t be back until tomorrow night, would you mind staying with Stephanie while I´m gone? I don´t want her to be alone with everything that has happened…" I smiled again, it was so sweet of him to think like that and I told him.

"Of course I can stay with Steph; we can have a girl's night in or something… Are you going alone?"

"Thanks Kat, no I´m bringing Santos to fly the plane."

"Oh, okay well I guess I´ll see you tomorrow or something then. Bye Ranger." I told him and left his office to find Santos. He had told me he had a monitor shift now so I went to the monitor room to look for him.

He was there, he was watching the screens with a bored expression and Ram was no better.

"Hi Santos, Hi Ram." I greeted them as I entered the small but important room. Ram only raised his hand in a greeting but Santos looked at me and gave me a smile, he was happy to see me.

"Hi Gorgeous what brings you here?" He asked and I allowed him to bring his arms around me and pull me down to sit on his lap, his arms holding me tightly in a hug for a few moments before loosening their grip a little.

"I heard you´re flying to Miami this afternoon so I just came to say goodbye, I´m spending the evening up on seven with my wildcat for a girls night in so you don´t have to worry about me." The last part I whispered in his ear so that Ram wouldn´t hear and his arms tightened for a moment so I knew he had heard me.

I stayed in the monitor room for almost another hour, chatting with Santos and Ram and enjoying my seat in Santos lap before I left them to grab myself a chicken sandwich for lunch before going down to the shooting range to practice my marksmanship. When I had done that I was debating if I should squeeze in a work-out as well before joining Steph up on seven for the night. My decision was made for me when my phone rang, the screen showing that it was Steph who was calling me.

"Hi wildcat." I greeted her when I answered the phone.

_"Hi Dragon, are you feeling better now? Ranger said he had talked to you earlier about him and Santos leaving for Miami and that you thought we should have a girl's night in?"_

"Yeah I´m better now, yeah I did when do you want me to come up?"

_"Half an hour? They have just left and I could use a shower before…"_

"Yeah that sounds good, I´ll see you soon then." I told her before saying goodbye and hanging up. I thought hard for a minute before a smile crept onto my lips and I called Ella.

_"Ella speaking."_

"Hi Ella it´s Kat. I´m having a girl´s night in with Stephanie tonight, could I bother you for some appropriate food?"

_"It´s no bother dear, I could have it ready around seven tonight if that´s alright?"_

"It´ll be perfect Ella, thank you." I told her and hung up on her before heading up to my apartment to shower and grab a change of clothes. I was looking forward to tonight already.

35 minutes later I took the elevator up to the seventh floor, Ranger had given me my own key fob that would get me up to the seventh floor but not inside his apartment so when I exited the elevator I knocked on the door and waited for Stephanie to let me in.

I hadn´t bothered with real clothes after my shower and instead dressed myself in a pair of black and dark grey checkered pajama pants and a black t-shirt with a picture of a ninja on it. When Steph opened the door for me I saw that she had the same idea as me, only she was dressed in a pair of black basketball shorts that I believed belonged to Ranger and a black t-shirt with the batman logo on.

As soon as she had closed the door behind us her arms were wrapped around my neck and while she didn´t say anything, I could feel her relief that I seemed to be alright now flowing through her body. She let me go after only a few moments and then she dragged me to the living room and pushed me down to sit on the couch.

We watched a chick-flick on the TV before doing each other´s nails and talking about everything and nothing. After that we entered the subject boys and curled up on the couch with a scary movie playing and a bowl of popcorn in between us.

"So, any of the merry men caught your eyes yet Dragon?" Steph asked me with a mischievous smile and grabbed a handful of popcorn.

"Judging by your smile I have an idea that you already know the answer but fine, I´ll play your game wildcat. I stayed with Santos last night and there might be something there but we´re taking things slow with what happened to me before I left LA and everything."

"Oh come on, you gotta give me details! Have you kissed yet?"

"We did but we haven´t gone any further yet, we shared a bed too but nothing happened."

"Do you want something to happen then?" Steph asked with curiosity in her voice and a far too knowing look in her eyes.

"I´m not sure… I think so though. But I´m a little worried that I won´t be able to love again after everything with Scott…" I trailed off and turned my head away so that I didn´t look her in the eyes. I didn´t want her to think that I was just playing with Santos because I wasn´t but I really was afraid that I couldn´t love again despite Santos reassurances. Steph´s eyes softened and she spoke softly.

"Hey Kat, don´t worry about it. I know you and I know you have a heart big enough to love the entire population of New Jersey if you had to." She told me all of this with an honest smile on her face and I felt my fear diminish a little.

"What about you then, how are things going with Ranger?" I asked her after a few minutes in silence. She blushed a deep red but answered me anyway.

"We´re doing great, I don´t even think things could be any better than what they are right now. Whatever you said to him after the apartment went up in smoke worked as a charm and I owe you everything for that. I don´t know what would have happened if he hadn´t opened up and I frankly don´t want to think about it either."

"You don´t owe me anything Steph, I´m just happy I could help. You two are clearly meant to be together."

"Thanks Kat… I just wished I knew what you told him…" She said with a wistful sigh and leaned back into the couch.

"I just explained to him why you were so hesitant to move in with him and made him realize that there was nothing stopping him from opening up to you except for his own habits."

"Well whatever you did I thank you deeply for it." She told me before getting up from the couch asking me.

"Want some wine?"

"Sure but the food should be here any minute now." I told her just in time to hear the front door open and Ella´s voice calling out for us. We met her in the kitchen, both of us curious about what she had brought us and we were pleasantly surprised to find lasagna, a salad, garlic bread and a delicious looking chocolate cake for dessert.

We both thanked Ella several times before she left again and we dug in on the food. We each had two servings of lasagna and then we even managed to make the whole chocolate cake disappear even if it took us most of the night to do it.

We took several photos of ourselves, both in pajamas, decked out in full army gear and in slutty dresses and mile-high FMP: s. We giggled at the silly pictures but decided to keep several of them as memories. We then put on another scary movie and laughed and hid behind the pillows before finishing the night of with another chick-flick before heading off to bed. We both curled up underneath the heavenly sheets in Rangers luxurious bed and it didn´t take long before the long day and an evening with amazing food, nice wine and many laughs had lulled the two of us to sleep.

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Let me know what you think! Since so many of you have expressed wishes that I include Steph and Rangers talk the next chapter will be just that. Until then. =)

Love C


	13. Steph and Ranger s talk

I do not own anything except for Kat and the storyline.

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**AN:** **Warning! **Lemon in this one people.

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**DRAGON**

_Chapter Thirteen – Steph and Ranger´s talk_

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**Stephanie POV**

I woke up to Kat gently shaking my shoulder, I was still lying on the couch in Ranger´s office and I looked up at Kat questioningly.

"Come on Steph wake up, I´ve talked to Ranger for you but you need to go up to seven so you two can talk things through." She told me and I rubbed the sleep from my eyes before sitting up, hiding a yawn behind my hand.

I understood what she told me but I was still both nervous and a little scared about going to see Ranger, what if it went badly? Where would I go then? He might´ve been my batman but that didn´t mean that he didn´t have any faults too… If he doesn´t start talking to me I don´t know how long I can stand to stay here and call him my boyfriend…

"Stop worrying Steph I said I would help you and I have, trust me." Kat told me with a gentle smile and pulled me up from the couch. I gave her a nod and a weak smile but started to slowly walk to the elevator to go up to seven. I did trust her and I really hoped that she had managed to help us but I was still scared…

I felt Kat´s eyes on me all the way until the elevator doors closed behind me.

When I exited on the seventh floor my stomach was in nervous knots and I felt the need to run away and hide. But I had nowhere to hide so the only thing left for me to do was to confront the problem head on.

The door to Ranger´s apartment was open to my surprise; he never left his door open. A stab of worry went through me and I hurried inside, closing and locking the door behind me and started to search for Ranger. Could something have happened between Kat left and I got here?

But nothing seemed to be wrong, I found Ranger sitting on his couch seemingly lost in thoughts. He didn´t notice me enter and I realized that it must´ve been Kat who left the front door open so that I could get in, Ranger had probably not even realized that Kat had left judging by the look on his face.

I realized that I had a once in a lifetime opportunity to simply watch Ranger with most of his defenses down and unaware of his surroundings so I stayed in the doorway and decided to wait and see how long it would take for him to notice me standing here.

While watching him I thought about the time when he had first told me that his life didn´t lend itself to relationships before he sent me back to Morelli. I had been heartbroken and it had taken me a long time to piece together the shattered pieces of my heart so now I was more careful with it.

I could not allow myself to move in with him if he simply offered it because I had nowhere else to go, unless he could tell me that he really wanted us to be together for real and mean it I could not allow myself any closer to him than I already was.

It might be true that I didn´t feel any panic at the thought of a life-long relationship with Ranger but I also knew that I would not survive another heartbreak like the one I suffered when he told me that his love came with a condom and not a ring.

Unless he could tell me what had made him change his mind about a relationship with me, I would allow him no closer than he already was. I had never asked him for a ring but I couldn´t do simply casual sex either, I loved him too much so it would only hurt me more in the long run.

All I wanted was honesty…

I pulled away from my train of thoughts and saw that Ranger still hadn´t noticed me, I frowned and decided to go and sit next to him on the couch, I was getting tired of waiting for him to notice me.

He didn´t react to my presence at all until I sat down on the couch only a few inches away from him. Then he actually flinched and I couldn´t help but smile at the fact that I had managed to catch him off guard.

"Babe." He said and I knew he meant it both as a greeting, a sign of relief and an endearment.

"Batman." I replied with a small smile.

"We need to talk." He said with a sigh and locked his eyes on me, probably to see if I was going to run away from him or not.

"We do." I agreed and instead of moving away from him I moved even closer, close enough so that I could wrap my arms around his neck and pull him in for a hug. His arms closed around me automatically and I took the opportunity to take a sniff of the Bulgari green shower gel from his neck before leaning my forehead against his collarbone and admitting.

"I´m scared."

"Of what?" Since I was so close I could feel the vibrations in his chest and throat when he spoke and it gave me goosebumps.

"Of this talk… What if you don´t want to be with me after we have it?" I admitted weakly.

"I´ll always want to be with you Stephanie, nothing will change that." he tried to assure me but it wasn´t working.

"Then why did you tell me that your love came with a condom and not a ring after we got together the first time? That your life didn´t lend itself to relationships? What has changed? You really broke my heart when you told me to go back to Morelli and I can´t deal with that kind of rejection again…" My eyes were burning with held back tears and I pulled back enough so that I could see his eyes as I waited for him to explain it to me.

"When I told you that my life didn´t lend itself to relationships it was true, I still had my contract with the government and it didn´t feel fair to have to leave you behind every time I had to go away on a mission with only hours' notice. At that time I could not promise anything more than here and now because I never knew if I was going to have a later." He put his hand around my neck and pulled me in for a kiss and when we separated again he continued.

"But now my contract with the government has expired, and I didn´t resign it. I won´t have to go on another mission ever again." I felt my eyes widen and then a cautious smile entered my lips.

"For real?"

"For real. I´m really sorry for the things I have done that have caused you heartache… Things will be better from now, I´ll do my best to open up to you more and tell you about things." He promised me and the tears that had gathered in my eyes earlier fell from my eyes.

He kissed them away and then kissed my mouth like the end of the world was tomorrow and he would never get another chance to do it. I responded to his kiss eagerly, wanting to be as close to him as physically possible. When he slipped his tongue inside my mouth to explore me further I moaned and dug my nails into his back.

Wanting to feel his skin against mine I let my hands wander down his body until they slid underneath the hem of his shirt and traveled back up across the planes of hard muscle and soft skin. He groaned and picked me up from the couch, carrying me to his bedroom and carefully putting me down on his bed before impatiently ripping of his shirt and then mine.

His hands roamed freely over my body but never where I wanted his attentions the most and I moaned into his mouth when his hands cupped my breasts through the bra.

"Ranger… I need you…" I told him breathlessly and he smirked at me in a way that made my pulse go sky-high and my internal muscles clench in anticipation. He quickly got rid of our clothes and then when we were both naked, he hovered over me before kissing me. When his lips left my mouth they made a trail down my neck, biting down gently on the juncture of my neck and shoulder, marking me before continuing downwards until he reached my breasts.

He latched on to one perky nipple with his mouth and let his hand caress the other one. After a while he switched and we he was satisfied that my breasts had been lavished with enough attention, he continued the trail of kisses down my stomach until he reached my center.

He hovered over me, his warm breath against my wet opening making me shudder. He flicked his tongue over my clit once and then descending on me, licking and sucking and making me moan and shudder and tangle one hand in his hair and the other fisting the sheets to have something to hold on to.

I was getting closer to the edge by the second and then Ranger´s unrelenting administrations pushed me over and I screamed his name as I came, fast and hard.

"CARLOS!"

He kissed his way back up my body as I came down from my high and after pressing another loving kiss on my lips, giving me a taste of my own juices, he looked me in the eyes and told me.

"Call me that again."

"Carlos." I spoke with a hoarse voice and he closed his eyes as a serene smile entered his lips. It made me happy that I could bring him such joy from only calling him by his name.

He drew back a little and then he pushed himself inside of me, making me gasp for breath one moment and moan the next one. My hands automatically went to his shoulders, my nails digging into his skin slightly as he moved within me. We moved together for what felt like forever, but wasn´t nearly long enough, and I was steadily getting closer to the edge for a second time.

He sped up his pace when he noticed how close I was, and after only another few thrusts I was sent over the edge, once again screaming his name. he soon followed me and after releasing inside of me he leaned forward to press a kiss to my lips and then another one to my forehead before slowly pulling out of me and laying down beside me.

"I love you Stephanie." He whispered in my ear and I felt a smile stretch my lips, answering him.

"I love you too Carlos."

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Let me know what you think guys!

Love C


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